Dan Crenshaw takes swipe at Pete Davidson after winning election, hopes to go back to a time when comedians were 'actually funny'
A dis from Pete Davidson on Saturday Night Live didn’t stop Dan Crenshaw from coming out victorious in his election.
The former Navy SEAL celebrated being elected to the Texas Second Congressional District on Tuesday and mentioned Davidson’s widely panned joke — comparing the man who lost his eye in an explosion in Afghanistan to “a hit man in a porno movie.”
While waiting for the official results to come in, Crenshaw took the podium and addressed the controversy. “It’s been an interesting last 72 hours for us,” he said. “People ask us, ‘Are you offended?’ I’m like, well, ‘I’m from the SEAL teams. We don’t really get offended.’ But we also like it when comedians are actually funny. You know? Let’s get back to that, right? Let’s get back to being funny.”
.?@DanCrenshawTX? just took the stage at his party in Houston and immediately addressed the SNL joke. “It’s been an interesting last 72 hours for us,” he said. He said people have been asking if he was offended. “I’m from the SEAL team so we don’t really get offended.” pic.twitter.com/wLUDqQAxop
— Emily Foxhall (@emfoxhall) November 7, 2018
After his victory, he spoke more about it with the local Houston news station KRIV. “I said that SEALs don’t get offended. It’s just not what we do,” he said. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t offensive, but let’s stop demanding apologies and firings of people. Let’s demand that comedy actually be funny, but let’s be good people. Let’s not demand outrage all the time.”
Live chat with Dan Crenshaw after his victory speech: pic.twitter.com/03wnzLXnWc
— Ivory Hecker FOX 26 (@IvoryHecker) November 7, 2018
During the evening, Crenshaw also spoke about his 2012 injury and how it was a unifying thing because he and his wife were so supported.
“[When] my wife Tara got the phone call that I’d been seriously injured, and I may never actually lay eyes on her again, she wasn’t alone,” he said. “Friends and teammates were with her. This life, this purpose, this American spirit that we hold dear, we are not alone, we do it together.”
Davidson, who has been having a helluva few weeks, made the joke during Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” segment on Saturday. It was immediately slammed — even by his peer Kenan Thompson, who said he crossed the line.
“It definitely seems it,” Thompson said on the Today show. “My father’s a veteran, Vietnam, and I personally would never necessarily go there, but it’s tough when you’re fishing for jokes — like that’s how standups 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.” Though he added, “Pete’s a very humble dude and he’s got a big heart and I don’t think he goes out to offend people, but standups, they’re the ones who help us laugh through the most awful things in the first place so they’re always fishing in weird places and that was an unfortunate outcome.”
Thompson added that SNL is also “figuring out a way to right that wrong,” but that’s all he knows. “It’s being handled internally and it’s not really my department, but since I’m out promoting [the movie] The Grinch, I get to answer these questions.”
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