SNL’s cold open already tackled Ted Cruz’s international escape, but there was no way Weekend Update was going to hold off on roasting the Texas senator for fleeing his state in the middle of a crisis to go to Cancun.
“Well if you hate Ted Cruz, this was a pretty fun week,” Colin Jost said to lead off the show. “And if you like Ted Cruz, then you’re Ted Cruz.”
Cruz’s facial hair was described as “slowly being reclaimed by nature” and both Jost and Michael Che certainly enjoyed poking fun of Cruz for his very public screwup during a very dangerous crisis in his home state.
Jost roasted Cruz for throwing his daughters “under the bus” by blaming them for his trip, as well as the imagery that his Texas flag mask gave us on his reentry into the United States.
“I just love that after he abandoned Texas he came back in a Texas flag mask like nothing happened,” Jost said. “That’s like Jared and Ivanka walking down fifth avenue in I Love NY t-shirts.”
“Cruz would have returned from Mexico even sooner but it took him like 40 minutes to get out of a hammock,” Che said later.
Later in the segment, the show covered Kanye West’s divorce, the Mars rover landing and two women dressing up like elderly women to get a second COVID-19 vaccine. But it was Cruz, for better or worse, who was the star of the show on Saturday.