SNL’s Pete Davidson eats crow for mocking wounded vet Dan Crenshaw, who delivers more in person
Last week, Pete Davidson took a passing shot at wounded former Navy SEAL and current Texas Republican Congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw. Specifically, he made a joke about how Crenshaw’s eye patch made him look like a “hitman in a porno movie.” (Crenshaw lost his eye when an IED blew up in his face during his third combat tour in Afghanistan.) Passed off at the time with Davidson joking about feeling bad about the joke since “he lost his eye in war or whatever,” the line didn’t go unnoticed by certain people.
Fox News yelling head Sean Hannity came out with the measured take that everyone at SNL “can go straight to hell,” for example, perhaps somehow forgetting about pal Donald Trump mocking war hero John McCain or Gold Star father Khizr Khan. (No matter, surely Hannity will come out just as forcefully against Trump’s decision on Saturday to ditch a visit honoring American soldiers who died in World War I because it was a little drizzly. Almost surely.) And while Crenshaw, who won his race after the episode aired (and mocked Davidson in his victory speech), hadn’t joined in the chorus calling for Davidson and his peers to suffer eternal damnation, he clearly wasn’t pleased.
On last night’s Weekend Update, Davidson sheepishly came out to apologize to Crenshaw, joking that his bad taste joke was certainly “a huge shock for people who know me,” and noting that at least Americans of all political persuasions can come together to call him a dick. To surprised applause, Crenshaw himself then came out and rather graciously forgave Davidson, saying that the comedian’s dad, Scott, was an American hero (the NYC firefighter died on 9/11, when Davidson was 7), and called for people of all persuasions to come together—and not just to agree that Pete Davidson is a dick. Urging respect for all veterans of the armed forces, Crenshaw accepted Davidson’s apology, but not before giving back some smack of his own.
With the currently blue-haired Davidson’s picture behind him, Crenshaw ably delivered some A-plus zingers, saying that Davidson looks like the human embodiment of Breaking Bad’s blue meth or like a troll doll with a tapeworm. Not content to just slam Davidson for not being as good on SNL as former cast member Martin Short (who he claimed Davidson resembled, at least in Short’s Jack Frost Santa Clause 3 getup), Crenshaw interrupted his rebuttal with a phone call whose ringtone was “breathin” by Ariana Grande, Davidson’s ex. Say what you want about the right-wing lawmaker’s policies, but that was an ice-cold burn.