Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas responded to a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that used him to poke fun at President Biden’s age on Sunday.
“SNL” depicted Mayorkas interviewing with CNN’s Dana Bash, an interview that ended up taking place in reality on Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
On the show, the actor depicting Mayorkas rejected claims that Biden was moving slowly at the border during his visit last week, saying he saw the president carry out superhuman feats of agility and strength.
“Behind closed doors, he’s a dynamo,” the faux-Mayorkas said. “He went into beast mode. He said, ‘We gotta tighten this border. Look how easy I can cross it.’ Then he parkoured up to the top of the border wall. He front-flipped into the Rio Grande and came back up with a fish in his mouth.”
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Bash asked Mayorkas about the sketch Sunday morning, asking, “Does that happen every day?”
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“We all need a little comic relief now and then. I thought George Clooney did a terrific job,” Mayorkas said, cracking a joke of his own. In reality, Marcello Hernández played Mayorkas.
Bash noted that the joke has a kernel of truth, in that a number of Americans are concerned about Biden’s age, while administration officials tend to point to supposed examples of the president’s vitality not seen by the public. Mayorkas continued this trend in response to Bash.
“They should spend a bit of time with Joe Biden like I have done,” he responded before offering an anecdote. “I prepare a lot for meetings with him and engagements with him because he’s remarkably detail-oriented, probing and operationally focused.”
“But no fishing in the Rio Grande?” Bash asked.
“Not for me,” Mayorkas said.
Biden visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, last week, holding a competing event with former President Trump, who visited the much more heavily trafficked Eagle Pass, Texas.
Data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows that Brownsville has seen just 46 migrant encounters over the past five days, compared to 2,106 in Eagle Pass. The former averaged 17 migrant encounters per day in February, while the latter averaged 462.
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