President Trump (James Austin Johnson) dreamt about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) struggled to fend off reporters’ war crime questions in tonight’s “Saturday Night Live” cold open.
Things got off to a hot start this week, with the cold open’s announcer noting at the top of the segment, “You’re watching C-SPAN. Hey, Netflix, we’re for sale, too,” in reference to Netflix’s new deal to buy Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max. From there, Jost’s fired-up Hegseth took to the podium to insult, deflect and deny as much as he could in the face of some hard-hitting questions.
“Now, you got questions for me? Fine. Pretend I’m a random fishing boat and fire away,” Jost’s Hegseth announced. In response, he was immediately asked if there was any truth to the reports that he illegally ordered a second strike on a suspected drug-running boat in the Caribbean intended to kill the vessel’s shipwrecked, helpless survivors.
“First of all, that kind of cruel, heartless act has no place in Operation Kill Everybody,” Hegseth responded. “Second, I wasn’t even in the room when it happened, OK? I was so jacked up after the first strike I had to make an emergency call to my sponsor — sorry, a guy I met at an anonymous meeting.”
You can watch part of the “SNL” cold open yourself below.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth fields questions from the press pic.twitter.com/horSOpFkoD
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) December 7, 2025
Hegseth was eventually asked whether President Trump really has begun distancing himself from his Secretary of Defense over the war crime allegations against him. “To answer your question, President Trump has my back 100%,” Jost’s Hegseth insisted. “Unlike you beta cucks, he’s a high-energy alpha who trusts me and listens to me no matter what. Isn’t that right, Mr. President?”
Unfortunately for Jost’s Hegseth, when the camera cut to Trump, he was asleep in his chair. Even worse, he was dreaming out loud. “Stop, Mamdani, ugh,” the president murmured. “You can freeze my rent anytime.” When he finally jolted awake, Johnson’s Trump said, “I wasn’t sleeping. I’m very much awake. Now, someone quickly tell me: Where am I? Who am I? And what year might it be?”
Jost’s Hegseth cut in and nudged the president into expressing his full support for him publicly again. “We love, Pete. He’s a great guy. It was just fog of war, right? Fog of war! It’s the thing you only say after doing war crime, right?” the president observed. “You never hear a general go, ‘Everything went according to plan in fog of war.’ It’s like when you go into the sauna at Equinox and suddenly you’re doing stuff you never did before.”
“Fog of War. We love it. It’s a great new excuse. We love it. So I stand by Pete, and nothing can change my mind,” Johnson’s Trump concluded. “Unless, of course, it could hurt me in any way, in which case I’ll throw him under one of Mamdani’s free busses.”
Later, Jost himself returned to the topic of Netflix’s deal with Warner Bros. during the week’s “Weekend Update” segment. “It was announced Friday that Netflix is buying Warner Bros. Discovery for $82 billion,” Jost recapped, before adding, “Explains why Netflix just raised its monthly plan to $50 million.”
