A cast member for Saturday Night Live, a late-night comedy show on NBC that hasn’t had a funny cast for a very long time, mocked the appearance of Republican congressional candidate and veteran Dan Crenshaw during SNL‘s latest episode.
“Dan Crenshaw…you may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas and not a hitman in a porno movie,” SNL cast member Pete Davidson said. A giggling Davidson added: “I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war or whatever.”
Or whatever.
Dan Crenshaw was nearly blinded in 2012 when he was hit by an IED blast in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where he was on his third deployment. He lost his right eye in the blast, and his left eye was badly damaged.
Shame on you, @nbcsnl, this is disgusting! pic.twitter.com/VQnhXMa6iT
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) November 4, 2018
A former Navy SEAL who lost an eye in an IED blast in Afghanistan, Crenshaw often wears a an eyepatch.
Update: Crenshaw responded to SNL with a tweet:
Good rule in life: I try hard not to offend; I try harder not to be offended. That being said, I hope @nbcsnl recognizes that vets don’t deserve to see their wounds used as punchlines for bad jokes.
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) November 4, 2018
THE WEEKLY STANDARD profiled Crenshaw earlier this year when he was a longshot to make the runoff in the Republican primary:
In a recent interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Crenshaw reserved his criticism for Kathaleen Wall, whom he portrayed as an uninspiring candidate essentially buying the seat. “You keep electing old, rich, white people to the seat—you can expect the Republican party to be gone in 50 years,” Crenshaw said. “We can’t keep doing that. We have to make conservatism cool and exciting again.” Crenshaw says articulate, fact-based, rational arguments are the way to win over young people, and he points to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro as a good example of how to do that.
What exactly does that argument look like when it comes to explaining why we should still be in Afghanistan after more than 16 years and nearly 2,300 U.S. deaths? “We just need leaders in Congress who are honest with the American people,” he says. A total victory over the Taliban “is possible if you put 200,000 troops on the ground,” but “the American people don’t have the will to do that. I think we all know that.”
“You pull out completely, you get September 11,” he continues. “You pull out completely, you get ISIS. You can’t do that. You need to maintain some pressure. You can hold, you can maintain peace in the major cities for the most part.”
“Victory looks like no more September 11ths,” he says. “We are accomplishing the mission. Everybody tries to undermine what we’re doing and the lives lost—that’s just sad. It’s sad that you can’t see a very simple strategic goal.”
“You’re preventing another attack. You have to have rough men out there willing to do violence in order to do that. It’s as simple as that.”
