For the first time in a long time, Saturday Night Live opened this week’s show with James Austin Johnston’s Donald Trump, who was addressing the residents of East Palestine, Ohio (“Not a great name!”) after this month’s toxic train derailment.
“I had to come here and see these wonderful people who have been abandoned by Biden,” Trump said. “He’s on spring break in Ukraine with his friend Zelensky in the T-shirt, very disrespectful.” From there, the former president continued to rant about McDonald’s, Trump water, Schitt’s Creek and Rihanna’s pregnant Super Bowl performance, before circling back to the topic at hand.
“Your train exploded and who do we blame?” he asked. “We blame Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg, this was his responsibility. Unfortunately, he was too busy being a nerd and being gay to have dealt with the very much more important issue of should trains have big poison? And I have to tell you, I call him Pete Butt, there’s no way around it, that’s just the best one. Believe me, I’ve tried it every which way and it really doesn’t get better than Pete Butt.”
But the real highlight of the sketch came when Trump invited Grand Jury forewoman Emily Kohrs (a pitch-perfect Chloe Fineman) to join him at the podium.
“She’s an odd duck, but we like her,” Trump said. “She’s either 7 or 40, we can’t tell. And she’s got a big secret for such a kooky little lady.”
“Potentially… I might… I don’t know…” she replied coyly. “You just want me to ruin the case, but I guess I can say that we have been saying your name a lot.”
“Can you believe that? They almost had me and then this little horse girl comes in and saves the day,” Trump said with a smile. “Do we like her or what? She looks like Haley Joel Osment and she’s my best friend!”
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