Former Navy SEAL and congressman-elect Dan Crenshaw said he doesn’t believe being mocked on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend hurt or helped his chances in the 2018 midterm election.
In projections early Wednesday morning, Crenshaw earned 53 percent of the vote against his Democratic challenger Todd Litton in Texas’ 2nd Congressional District, which includes the northern and western part of Houston.
Pete Davidson, during a segment called “Weekend Update,” made a joke about the former Navy SEAL looking more like a “hit man in a porno movie” than a congressional candidate. “I’m sorry. I know he lost his eye in war — or whatever.”
Crenshaw wears an eyepatch over his right eye, which he lost in 2012 on his third deployment after he was hit by an IED blast in Afghanistan. He said he was lucky to regain eyesight in his left eye.
“[The SNL joke] didn’t hurt, I don’t think it helped,” Crenshaw told CNN about the incident that brought him national attention just days before the midterm election.
The former SEAL said he received an email from “SNL” producers apologizing for the joke, but said he did not hear anything about the $1 million he requested to go toward veterans groups as an apology.
In his victory speech, Crenshaw saw politics should be divided from things that are supposed to be fun like sports, comedy, and entertainment.
“Especially on the conservative side, we feel as though every time we have a policy disagreement, the Left attacks who we are, they attack our intent as though we are bad people,” Crenshaw said in reference to his speech. “On the comedy side, my message to Hollywood and my message to sports is to allow people to take a break from politics. Please don’t politicize your comedy in a way that is mean-spirited, and that’s what happened this weekend, but it happens more than just that, and the American people would like to take a break.”
When asked if Trump contributed to the heated rhetoric, Crenshaw conceded that it would help if the president would tone down the rhetoric and “lower the temperature.”
