Rising Saturday Night Live star Ashley Padilla reprised her role as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in the latest cold open, this time to roast Noem’s sudden ouster from Trump’s cabinet.
“I just want to make it clear that I didn’t get fired. I self-deported,” Padilla’s Noem clarified at a press conference.
She added, “And 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.”
Referencing the real Noem’s infamous 2024 admission that she shot her own dog Cricket, SNL‘s Noem declared, “I gave my all to the DHS, and I have no regrets. Because like they say: you miss 100 percent of the dogs you don’t shoot.”
ICE Barbie’s firing was announced by President Trump on Truth Social on Thursday, which is reportedly how Noem learned she was getting the boot. Trump revealed that Noem would be replaced by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter and fellow Republican with similar views on immigration enforcement.
Trump spun Noem’s firing as a positive, telling his supporters that she would serve as the new “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” a job title and department that did not exist before he posted about them.
Soon after Trump’s announcement, Noem posted on X, thanking Trump for her obvious demotion.
“@SecRubio and @SecWar are incredible leaders,” Noem wrote, “and I look forward to working with them closely to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren.”
The apparent final straw for Noem was her Senate hearing on Wednesday in which she was grilled for spending $220 million on an advertising campaign, for the killings of two Minneapolis citizens by federal agents under her watch, and for her alleged affair with her (also married) top adviser, Corey Lewandowski.
“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,” said SNL’s Noem.
“And I think I really nailed it,” she said. “And by ‘it,’ I mean my married co-worker in a big, beautiful, flying bedroom 30,000 feet over Minneapolis.”
The first half of the cold open featured Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, played once again by “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost.
As with the previous cold open, Jost’s Hegseth tried to sell reporters on Trump’s war with Iran, but couldn’t help but let his frat boy tendencies get in the way.
“The situation’s complicated, OK, so let me put it in terms that I can understand,” Hegseth said. “We’re giving Iran a third-degree purple nurple.”
When reporters asked Hegseth if the conflict with Iran counted as a war, Hegseth replied, “Why do we have to put labels on everything? What are you guys, a high school girlfriend—which I had!“
Hegseth continued, “This isn’t a war, OK? It’s a situationship. 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.”
