The Saturday Night Live cold open saw James Austin Johnson returning as Donald Trump, two days before the inauguration, this time talking about the TikTok ban.
About an hour before the show aired, TikTok really did go dark as a new U.S. law was about to go into effect restricting the social media platform from U.S. app stores. The law gave Chinese parent ByteDance a time frame to sell TikTok or face a ban. A sale never happened, and TikTok said the ban went into effect at midnight.
The premise of the SNL open was MSNBC’s coverage of inauguration weekend, with Rachel Maddow (Sarah Sherman) and other anchors struggling to focus on the substance of Trump’s policies but perpetually distracted by his many wild proposals and Truth Social posts.
Then, with the TikTok news, the anchors were unable to resist going to coverage of Trump’s statement.
Watch on Deadline
“Yes, we love TikTok, don’t we?” Johnson, as Trump, said. “We love TikTok. We used to hate it, but then it, quite frankly, in many ways, got me elected.” Then, Trump went into the “weave,” or the tendency of his pontificating to go into stream of consciousness.
“We also love the Rizzler, don’t we folks? They’re trying to take the Rizzler away from us. It’s so sad. They want him the hell out of here.” He went on to talk about other social media sensations, including the ice bucket challenge.
“We may have to go over to Reels with Mark Zuckerberg. I like him now. Zuck, he looks much better, much cooler in terms of perm and with regard to pain. He will of course be at my inauguration which will be indoors — too many people to fit outside.”
He continued, “We’re very excited to be inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day. I like sharing the day.”
Then, he introduced his “latest cabinet pick” — George Santos (Bowen Yang).
“I’m so honored to be joining Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Fact Checking and Ambassador to Sephora,” Santos said. “I am part of the politician to Cameo back to politician and eventually to jail pipeline.
The coverage went back to the MSNBC anchors, having been unable to resist Trump’s relentless tweets and pronouncements, which included the announcement that “America has declared war on sharks: and that Trump would like to trade Connecticut. In addition to Maddow, the skit also spoofed Stephanie Ruhle, Ari Melber, Joy Reid and Chris Hayes.
More to come.