With the stock market spiraling and fears of a recession growing, there was almost no question about where “Saturday Night Live” would focus its cold open.
The typical slot for the sketch show’s political comedy tore into Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs, with James Austin Johnson’s take on the president predicting that his plan would “Make America Great Depression Again.”
The sketch served as a showcase for Johnson’s discursive and oddly inflected take on Trump, ranging from bits about Cheesecake Factory to the uninhabited islands that the Trump admin subjected to a 10% import tariff.
“It’s called Heard and McDonald Island,” he said. “Can you imagine that? A Big Mac in a hula skirt. Ooh-la-la.”
After being handed a mock-up of McDonald’s Island, featuring chicken nuggets dancing around a skirted Big Mac under french fry palm trees, Johnson rattled off a rapid-fire series of self-referential jokes about the show’s history.
“I want to go to there. Tina!” he said. “Get me to God’s country, right? Remember that?”
Johnson’s Trump ran through the best ways to eat cat meat (braised) and reassured the country that “everything is going to be fine and/or bad” before handing the microphone over to Mike Myers’ Elon Musk.
SNL’s Musk and Trump played up the reported rift between the president and his adviser, with Trump saying, “It’s time to never see you again.”
Myers as Musk responded to the wave of Tesla dealership protests and vandalism with a new Tesla model that will vandalize itself, giving users a choice between graffiti of a swastika or a penis.
“Swastikas or penises,” Johnson’s Trump said. “We’re truly the party of Lincoln.”
Watch the sketch below:
