Watch Fred Willard square off against Ted Cruz's mythical "space pirates"

One very dull silver lining of the Trump presidency is the way in which certain conservatives, who had previously worked hard over decades to brand themselves as “intelligent” Republicans, have been forced to absolutely bulldoze those already-flimsy edifices in service of appeasing the latest capricious whims of our big round mound of president. So it is that you get people like Harvard man Ted Cruz—the thinking man’s dumbass—going to bat for inanity like Trump’s proposed Space Force by claiming that we must protect our nation against space pirates.

As both you and Ted Cruz well know, there’s no such thing as “space pirates,” nor will there be for a number of generations made unlikely by the threat of global warming. What there is, however, is a 1978 TV movie called Space Force, and that televised Space Force seems like just the crew to battle Cruz’s dreaded space pirates. Thankfully, Jimmy Kimmel Live! has brought back the series, including original star Fred Willard, to do just that in the clip above.

This new adventure is Space Force 2: Attack Of The Space Pirates, and this time the crew gets a call from none other than Admiral Cruz to take on those dastardly cutthroats of the final frontier. Though the space pirates with their laser swords and space parrots are an imposing threat, they’re no match for Willard’s Space Force and their futuristic, form-fitting jumpsuits. May the Space Force forever protect America and its treasury of moon doubloons.