Ashley Padilla’s Kristi Noem crashed a C-SPAN press conference in tonight’s “Saturday Night Live” cold open to insist she was not fired from her position as Secretary of Homeland Security but instead “self-deported.”
“I just want to make it clear that I didn’t get fired,” Padilla’s Noem told reporters. “Though I may be leaving this job, I will not be ending my mission. As I told my plastic surgeon, ‘The work is never done.’ But I gave my all to the DHS, and I have no regrets, because, like they say, ‘You miss 100% of the dogs you don’t shoot.’”
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. I took this job with the goal of securing our border, deporting thousands of illegals and spending $200 million on ads of me riding a horse, and I think I really nailed it,” Padilla’s Noem continued. “By ‘it,’ I mean my married co-worker [Corey Lewandowski] in a big, beautiful, flying bedroom 30,000 feet over Minneapolis.”
The former Homeland Security Secretary noted that “leaving is bittersweet,” but said she looks forward to her new position as a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas. “I just saw my new office, which is at a WeWork space outside of Denver, and it is spectacular,” Noem told those gathered. “So this may be goodbye, but this isn’t goodbye forever.”
Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth quickly cut in to remind Noem, “Yeah, except that it is.” You can watch tonight’s “SNL” cold open yourself below.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth takes questions from the press about the current military operations in Iran pic.twitter.com/em77F74Zrk
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) March 8, 2026
Earlier in the cold open, Jost’s Secretary of Defense fielded questions about the current U.S. military conflict in Iran, which he insisted is not a war. “It’s a situationship,” Jost’s Hegseth claimed. “We’re just gonna hook up. We’re gonna see where it goes, OK? If it feels good, we’ll keep going, and if we get bored, we’ll start hooking up with Cuba.”
“I’ll tell you what’s happening: We don’t know, OK? And that’s the whole point. If we don’t know what we’re doing, then Iran definitely doesn’t know what we’re doing,” Jost’s Hegseth added. “We’re wild, OK? We’re unpredictable. We’re like Shia LaBeouf [in New Orleans]. Shout out ‘Transformers’! Shout out Megan Fox back on Insta!”
A female reporter (Sarah Sherman) chimed in to ask Hegseth not only what he meant when he said that the Trump administration’s military strategy would be “maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct,” but also why it rhymed. “Because I’m white Hamilton,” Jost’s Hegseth responded, before doing a brief parody of “My Shot” from that hit Broadway musical.
“I’m just like my country,” the Secretary of War rapped. “I’m drunk, angry and horny, and they made me throw away my scotch.”
