“Saturday Night Live” uses the cold open as its free space to comment on current events, and last night was no exception. With Good Friday approaching and the markets still upended by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the sketch show’s opener inserted Trump into the story of Jesus Christ.
The scene opens with Mikey Day, as Jesus, becoming enraged upon finding moneychangers in the temple.
“I will rid this place of all of its money,” Day says as he flips the table.
At that point, James Austin Johnson’s Trump walks in from side-stage, causing the scene to freeze.
“Remind you of anyone?” he asks.
Johnson’s Trump spends the rest of the sketch comparing himself to Jesus — at one point even calling himself “Donald ‘Jesus’ Trump” — and cracking jokes about the devaluation of the dollar and stock market turmoil caused by his seemingly arbitrary tariffs.
“Many people are calling me the Messiah,” he said. “Because of the mess I, uh, made out the economy.”
Like an earlier freeze-frame bit with Lin Manuel Miranda, Johnson’s Trump uses to the conceit to poke and prod his fellow cast members, mocking them for the positions they chose to hold and their relative seniority within the cast.
The Trump prodding didn’t end with the cold open, as the show went on to imagine the Trump family fighting their demons at a high-end resort in the glitzy parody “The White Potus.” “Weekend Update” turned much of its runtime over to tariff talk as well.
“President Trump tried to rescue the economy from the disastrous policies of whoever was president last week,” Colin Jost cracked of Trump’s 90-day pause. “Now, 90 days might not seem like a long time. But remember, Trump has only been president for 82 days and it already feels like a g**damn decade.”
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