If this season of “Saturday Night Live” has a comfort zone, it’s a cold open that lets James Austin Johnson ramble as President Donald Trump for a few minutes at a time. Last night, in an episode hosted by Josh O’Connor, he once more found himself surrounded by reporters — this time on Air Force One.
Throughout this SNL season, Johnson has played Trump as too exhausted to function, and this cold open was no different. He was introduced by Ashley Padilla as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who informed the media that, for Trump, “it’s very late, he’s exhausted, his brain is all over the place.”
But the news briefing must go on, so Johnson appeared from behind a blue curtain, which he cradled and fondled for the entire bit. “Tonight, I took both an Ambien and an Adderall, so we’re going to see which one wins,” Johnson said, before going on a tangent about how attracted he is to Leavitt.
“It’s pretty amazing I can just openly simp over my young, blond subordinate,” Johnson said. He got meta for a moment, instructing the cameras to get an uncomfortably close shot of her lips before referencing Sherrone Moore’s recent firing: “It’s giving Michigan football coach.”
He then took a question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins (Chloe Fineman) — a “nasty, horrible witch” — about the economy, prompting Johnson to babble about the “awful presidents who came before like Biden and Trump.” He then asked for a question from “a man.”
Johnson fiddled with the curtain, at times turning it into a cape or a comfort blanket. He got particularly cozy as a reporter played by Andrew Dismukes asked for comment about the oil tanker the Trump administration seized off the Venezuelan coast. Misquoting the film “Captain Phillips,” Johnson told the press: “I’m captain now.”
As he continued to talk about military escalation in Venezuela, his team shared footage of a recently targeted plane, which looked suspiciously like Santa’s sleigh. When a reporter, played by Jeremy Culhane, asked if that was Santa, Johnson responded: “Not anymore!”
The questions shifted over to the Epstein files, a favorite topic of SNL this season. When a reporter asked about the latest photos shared by House Democrats, Johnson dismissed them as a hoax. But after being asked about a photo of “a bowl of condoms with your face on them and the text saying ‘I’m huuuge,’” Johnson changed his tune: “They’re 100 percent legit, I love those files,” he said before being interrupted by an agitated Padilla.
This article will be updated.
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