Hours after Katie Zacharia was fired as White House press secretary five days into the job, the Canadian satirical series “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” captured the chaos in a sketch posted online — beating American late-night comedy shows to the punchline.
Some 48 hours later, and a week before the rapper Nicki Minaj traveled on Air Force One to rally for President Trump in Michigan, “22 Minutes” imagined the MAGA darling as Ms. Zacharia’s successor.
In both cases, the creative team on the show, Canada’s version of “Saturday Night Live,” did not wait for their weekly broadcast. The polished sketches went straight to the show’s TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, attracting nearly 24 million views.
For the last 34 years, this sketch comedy show has reliably roasted Canadian and American politics, culture and quirks. But “22 Minutes” is having a renaissance buoyed by Mr. Trump — in particular his trade war, tariffs, threats and insults toward Canada. Television audiences are up, and social media viewership is growing rapidly.
“Social media has opened up our show beyond what I thought was capable,” said Stacey McGunnigle, a cast member and writer who has created and portrayed many MAGA women, most memorably Karoline Leavitt, Natalie Harp and, ever so briefly, Ms. Zacharias.
“The show’s been on a long time, and we can be the butt of the joke sometimes as far as what people think our demographic is,” she said. “But in the six seasons I’ve been here, more young people are coming up to us who love it and watch it all the time.”
The characters Ms. McGunnigle most likes to play are pro-life, pro-gun, pro-war and pro-push-up bra. “Too much makeup, no moral compass, a pathological desire to protect the patriarchy, and blonde. Terrifying!” she said.
The show, which airs Tuesday nights on the publicly funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, leans progressive but traffics in nonpartisan political satire — anyone in the headlines is fair game. Since Mr. Trump began his second term, the show routinely points its lens at the United States and its deteriorating relationship with Canada.
“This Hour Has 22 Minutes” is the nosy neighbor with permanently raised eyebrows.
Fans include Graydon Carter, the Canadian-born former editor of Vanity Fair and co-founder of Spy magazine.
“Canadians are feeling an uncharacteristic blush of patriotism,” he said. “And there’s nothing like friction and impending chaos to bring out the satirists.”
Ms. McGunnigle operates with fast-twitch newsroom instincts. As soon as Ms. Zacharia held her first disastrous White House briefing, she knew the show had to do something. “And that 14-minute press conference,” Ms. McGunnigle said. “I felt we weren’t going to have her for long.”
While they were shooting the piece a few days later, Ms. Zacharia was fired. Ms. McGunnigle immediately began improvising, turning a sketch about Ms. Zacharia’s disastrous first news conference into one about her last. A bonus: “Saturday Night Live” was dark that week.
“Stacey McGunnigle’s Katie Zacharia was superb,” Mr. Carter said. “But for her it was a bit like getting the coveted lead in a play that closes on opening night.”
The weekly broadcast averages 571,000 viewers, up 31 percent from 435,000 last season, with 25- to 54-year-olds the leading demographic. The “Meet Katie” sketch has more than 21.5 million views across social media, and the first Leavitt sketch more than 7.8 million.
Mark Critch, a veteran cast member and writer in his 24th season, plays Mr. Trump.
“We’re the quiet house next door, and the house on the other side of the fence, they have a lot of loud parties, and there’s always arguing in the yard,” he said. “We’re watching over the fence going, ‘Oh, my God, what’s going on?’ We get to observe, which is a good thing for comedy.”
Mr. Critch has taken his Trump to Greenland. He whipped up a “Quiet, Piggy” sketch after the president insulted a reporter with the phrase. As Mr. Trump, he fulminated over The New York Times’s exclusive interview with Prime Minister Mark Carney, in a cold open. In an attempt to rekindle Canada-U.S. relations Mr. Critch, as himself, met with Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, who implored him to ask Canadians to resume visiting her state.
“I mean God almighty,” he said, “Even with all the arguing that goes on, there’s nothing a Canadian gets excited about more than American attention.”
Drawing inspiration from the Trump administration isn’t entirely new for the show. What is more recent is the speed at which the show reacts to news. Without social media, the show, taped on Mondays, would struggle to stay timely on Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States.
“TV shows are big machines and you don’t want to be late to the party,” Mr. Critch said. “There’s another audience that we can get to right away. When something happens in the moment, now the whole building pivots.”
Mike Allison, the executive producer and showrunner, said more people tuned in as Canadian-U.S. tensions escalated. Especially amusing has been the opportunity for interplay between Mr. Trump and Mr. Carney, played by Mark McKinney, on the war in Iran, reverse psychology, and McDonald’s. But not every sketch needs a Canadian tie.
“When writers pitch Kristi Noem or Kash Patel, that’s us looking over the fence at all the crazy characters running the country,” Mr. Allison said. “But U.S. politics have become Canadian politics.”
“22 Minutes has the DNA of the knowing outsider,” Mr. Carter said.
It always has. Twenty-five years ago, “Talking to Americans” was a popular segment testing how little Americans knew about Canada. Highlights included a Columbia University professor agreeing that the government should stop putting senior citizens on ice floes to die, and Mike Huckabee, then the governor of Arkansas, congratulating Canada on preserving its national igloo.
Mr. Critch often hears from Americans who don’t realize the show is Canadian.
“They will say, ‘Oh, good, thank you. That’s what I feel.’ But then you’ll get some saying, ‘You don’t know anything! That’s our president! Shut up!’” he said. “Something I see that’s actually very Canadian is Americans saying they’re sorry. ‘I’m so sorry this is happening. I’m so sorry they’re saying these things about your country. We love Canadians.’”
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