And it’s not like any other comedy impressionist tries to sound exactly like the person, anyways. Nobody got any president exactly right, and most deliberately deviated. Think of Dana Carvey’s HW Bush, for example.
Don’t know, I liked Baldwin’s take on Trump
I’m willing to bet it is this.
SNL may want to go harder but NBC absolutely will not let them. SNL can stay in the political humor lane they carved out decades ago but that is it.
The more direct Trump barbs are in Weekend Update.
They’re probably getting enough flack over Seth Meyers.
This Weekend Update - a protester was murdered in cold blood. And wonder if his murderers should be asking if we are dicks? Wow. Sharp barb. Having Black reporters mm mming over how this is what Black Americans has been dealing with for ages on another bit? Sharp attacks.
We are dealing with a fucking Civil War we one side is using all the power of the Federal government to attack states and citizens of those states unilaterally.
Humor can be weapon. Or it can be a pacification.. SNL right now is the latter.
I didn’t say they were sharp. I merely mention that they are more likely to be there, where they’re easier to hide. But SNL has been particularly lame this year, in all phases. Weekend Update in particular seems to have been toned down and shortened.
Three weeks until John Oliver returns. Too bad nothing much has happened while he was on hiatus, he’ll be scrambling to find something to talk about.
Weekend Update on January 24, 2026 was 12 minutes and 7 seconds long. Weekend Update on December 20, 2025 was 12 minutes and 43 seconds long. This is standard. It has not been shortened.
Everyone remembers the cold open of SNL’s first post-9/11 episode with Rudy Giuliani and Lorne Michaels (“Can we be funny?” “Why start now?”). But who remembers the first actual sketch of the night?
“Wake Up, Wakefield!”, featuring Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph as a couple of middle-school AV Club dorks making morning announcements, with nary a reference to recent events.
Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture.
The thing about Trump and MAGA in general is they really don’t care if you call them evil, fascist, or some other unsavory words. Oh, they might not love being called fascist, but it doesn’t bother them that much. In a way, I think being called those things makes them feel powerful.
But what they really hate is being mocked. It fills them with impotent rage and they don’t know what to do about it. I think SNL is handling Trump just fine. What more could I expect from them?
I’ll keep this thread in mind for future viewings, because I enjoy SNL’s Trump bashing, and it never occurred to me that they were going easy on him. Johnson’s impression (and the writing) seem to clearly show him as demented, as evil and narcissistic, as untethered to reality, as sadistically cruel. The Bush I impressions, for example, are in a different universe.
Again, I’ll keep this in mind.
I think everyone everywhere needs to use any platform they have to “go after” the Trump administration. We’re in deep shit, and it’s time to rise up. People can differ on what’s the most effect way for SNL to do that, but I definitely think they should do what they think is the most effective and ignore all possible consequences.
Actually, they seem to be pro-mockery of what is currently in the news, and a lot of what Trump and those in his sway are doing and saying would have to be ignored to achieve the false balance wanted by some right-wingers.
I’m a little torn about this. It’s fine on an individual or family level, but if I were a large corporation, and one of the possible consequences is that the feds arrest all your immigrant employees and send them to Nicaragua, I can see at least pausing to consider whether putting those people under the line of fire without their input is the best option.
They make Trump and his cronies look like evil clowns, which I think is very appropriate. And they do it by just barely altering what these people actually say and do in real life, because they really are evil clowns.
I think that accurate mockery acts to emasculate the administration in a way that it deserves and desperately needs. SNL should not change a thing.
The current admin makes fools of themselves. Every. Single. Day.
All SNL has to do is repeat it. Writers go home and relax.
I don’t look to SNL to be a resistance vanguard. Humor can be a powerful weapon but, speaking as someone who regularly watches and enjoys the show well enough for what it is, the SNL writers don’t have the chops for that, nor do the showrunners have the spine.
That said when the administration is straight up murdering people just poking gentle fun at how much they are making fools of themselves seems insufficient.
To be fair though I have no concept of what the right response is.
FWIW I felt tonight was more effective, both the ICE cold open (heh), and the bit with the mom making her announcement to her kids.