Trump, Jim Jordan’s Failures & “Awful” America Lights Up ‘SNL’s Cold Open

Dominic Patten
·4 min read
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“Yo-hoo, is this the loser’s room?” asked James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live’s cold open tonight. “Don’t we love our country, what an awful place it is,” he said later in the skit, nailing the ex-real estate mogul and one of the better political cold opens SNL has had in a long time.

Crashing a one-man pity party by Mikey Day’s phone-breaking Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Johnson’s ever better Trump mocked the never-was Speaker of the House for being rejected by his fellow Republicans. Stressing he “prefers the Jordans who win,” SNL’s Trump blew his own horn on what a great Speaker he would be, as some of the GOP wingnuts have suggested.

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“Sadly, I’ll be too busy campaigning,” Johnson mimicked as the much indicted former and perhaps future POTUS. “Traveling from city to city, visiting their beautiful courtrooms.”

As chaos, confusion and bloodshed continues between Israel and the Hamas-run Gaza following the terrorist attack on the Jewish state on October 7, the Republican clown show back in DC or the court case sh*tshow of the former Celebrity Apprentice host was clearly the direction SNL was going to go in for tonight’s cold open. In a rare case of splitting the difference, the show rightly chose to go for a bit of both – with a bit of Chloe Fineman as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and some Radiohead karaoke.

Or as Johnson’s Trump crowed: “Oh yeah, you will be taken care of!”

One of the reasons the cold open worked so well is due to the fact it was so self-contained. So often, even if the cold open starts strong, the skit throws in everything and the kitchen sink and becomes a mess.

Not tonight, when the cold open stuck to the tried, true and Trump — though the finesse of Day’s Jordan almost makes one wish the flame-throwing Ohio congressman had scored the Speakership, purely for comic value.

“Some of us are actually here to serve the American people,” lamented Day’s Jordan at the top of the skit. “All I want to do is get Congress back to work so I can shut it down again,” the Is It Cake? host added in a perfect real-life summary of Jordan’s leadership ambitions.

“Do you think if one more time I try I could be elected Speaker?” Day’s perfectly coiffed Jordan asked drop-in buddy Rep. George Santos (R-NY), played again to perfection by Bowen Yang. “I would be lying if I said yes, so yes,” said Yang’s Santos, who in real life is currently charged with a lot more than just lying to get himself into Congress.

In last week’s season premiere, host and former cast member Pete Davidson, who lost his firefighter father on 9/11, cast aside the traditional cold open to talk about the horrors unfolding in the Middle East. “Sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy,” he said to the camera before launching into a monologue about incest and Game of Thrones.

Now, after more than two weeks without a Speaker of the House, the GOP has seen Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Jordan go down to defeat at the hands of their own caucus colleagues and surprisingly united Democrats. If Joe Biden wasn’t already in full Commander-in-Chief mode with the crisis in the Middle East and Americans held hostage by Hamas, as well as the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the GOP would be handing him the prestige spotlight by default.

The second show of SNL’s 49th season, tonight’s episode sees Bad Bunny both hosting and appearing as musical guest, joining the elite of Paul Simon, Billi Eilish, Nick Jonas, Harry Styles, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, MC Hammer and Debbie Harry doing double duty. Bad Bunny, who previously appeared as musical guest in February 2021, releasedhis fifth solo album, chart topper Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, on October 13.

Next week will see Nate Bargatze hosting SNL for the first time, with the Foo Fighters as the musical act.

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