Saturday Night Live‘s Kenan Thompson disapproved of Pete Davidson’s joke during the most recent “Weekend Update” skit. The joke targeted some of the candidates up for election during Tuesday’s midterms, including Republican congressional candidate and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw.
Crenshaw lost his eye in 2012 while serving in Afghanistan, and Davidson’s joke seemed to make fun of that. “You may be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate in Texas and not a hitman in a porno movie,” he said according to The Hollywood Reporter, quickly laughing it off. “I’m sorry, I know he lost his eye in war, or whatever. Whatever.”
On Today, Thompson said Davidson “definitely missed the mark.”
“…My father’s a veteran, Vietnam, and I personally would never go there, but it’s tough when you’re fishing for jokes–like that’s how stand-ups feel like there’s no real filters out there in the world when they’re trying to go for a great joke or whatever and we try to respect that but at the same time, when you miss the mark, you’re offending people so you have to really be a little more aware in my opinion.”
But, Thompson said he thinks Davidson’s off-handed remarks after the joke were more about the joke not working out.
“I think he was more so commenting on the fact that the joke maybe didn’t land as hard as he wanted to as opposed to being like I don’t care about veterans,” he said to the Today hosts. “I think Pete’s a very humble dude, and he’s got a big heart. I don’t think he goes out to offend people. But stand-ups are…they’re the ones who help us laugh through the most awful things in the first place, so they are always fishing in weird places, and that was an unfortunate outcome.”
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