Working on less than 24 hours of turnaround, “Saturday Night Live” still found a way to weigh in on the United States attacking Iran.
In a thrown-together cold open, James Austin Johnson addressed the nation as “FIFA Peace Prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker” Donald Trump.
“We had to strike in the early hours of Saturday, which has two advantages militarily,” he said.”One, it’s after the stock market closes for the weekend. And two, it’s to cause immeasurable fear, rage and chaos in the “SNL” writers’ room…They probably had a big State of the Union thing they were gonna do. Not anymore!”
Johnson’s Trump went on to sing a version of Edwin Starr’s “War” that suggested Operation Epic Fury was a way to distract from the Epstein files before tossing the press conference to Colin Jost’s Pete Hegseth.
“We took out a horrendous, horrible leader who was oppressing his own people,” Jost said.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Johnson’s Trump interjected.
Weekend Update, the sketch show’s regular news desk segment, focused heavily on Iran.
“Guys, I’m starting to worry that President Trump might not win that peace prize,” Jost began the sketch.
The faux-anchor admitted that he wasn’t knowledgeable on Iran before throwing to a clip of a supposed expert. In the clip from 2011, Trump rages that the “president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.”
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“Detractors on CNN are saying that Trump had no authorization for this war,” co-anchor Michael Che added. “But he actually did. [Benjamin] Netanyahu said it’s OK.”
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