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Saturday Night Live pulled no punches in its opening with “a replay” of the notorious Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the show mocked the world leaders.
But the opening didn’t stop there. The cast also took shots at Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency – with alum Mike Myers playing the tech mogul.
In a reenactment of Friday’s White House meeting that SNL described as going “really, really well,” Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, introduced himself as the “CEO of Gaza hotel,” referring to the real president’s plans to make the war-torn region a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
He then turned to Zelensky, played by Mikey Day, and sarcastically thanked him for “dressing like casual Star Trek…I love Star Trek because there’s no DEI.” In reality, the Ukrainian leader wore a black sweater and black pants to the Oval Office meeting; Trump seemed to be peeved by his outfit choice.
The show then leaned into Trump’s tiptoeing around his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The fake Trump urged the fake Zelensky to “tell Putin how much you loved him and you’re sorry.”
That’s when Bowen Yang, as Vance, came in. “You haven’t said thank you for the past 15 seconds since I’ve been yelling at you,” Yang said.
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At Friday’s meeting, the real vice president pressed Zelensky: “Have you said thank you once?” Zelensky replied: “A lot of times. Even today.” Vance clarified his question: “No, in this entire meeting.”
Every time the SNL’s Zelensky tried to speak, the fake president and vice president kept interrupting in a way not too dissimilar from their real life counterparts.
At one point, the fake Vance said: “You have been talking this entire time. Does the sign outside say ‘Ukraine House?’ No, it says ‘America House.’”
The cold open also reenacted the “cards” portion of the meeting which really happened. The real Trump told the Ukrainian president: “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now with us.” Zelensky insisted: “I’m not playing cards right now, I’m very serious Mr President. I am a wartime president.”
In the skit, Trump insisted he had all the cards: “I have ‘skip.’ I have ‘draw four.’ I have ‘reverse.’ I have ‘get out of jail free’ — the Supreme Court gave me that one.”
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The fake Zelensky then suggested they should visit Ukraine.
“I’ve been to Ukraine on Google Maps. It’s a mess,” the fake Vance stated.
It wasn’t just the Ukraine meeting in SNL’s crosshairs. In the skit, Mike Myers, as Elon Musk, entered the gathering and sported a “tech support” T-shirt, which the real Musk wore in a cabinet meeting. The fake Musk also had a chainsaw, a reference to when the tech billionaire waved the tool around the stage at a right-wing conference.
The fake Musk told the fake president: “What are you doing in my office? I’m the president now. I’m kidding. Maybe I’m not…”
“I’m so comfortable with all of that,” the fake Trump said.
SNL then made fun of how DOGE, led by Musk, has upended the federal government. “They’re doing mass firings of the government. We love mass firings because we don’t need to know what their names are or what they do,” the fake Trump said.
“We are firing all nonessential employees, like air traffic controllers,” Myers as Misk said.
In real life, despite a series of aviation disasters in recent weeks, the Trump administration laid off hundreds of people at the Federal Aviation Administration — but none of them were air traffic controllers, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
Myers then introduced the fake next steps for DOGE – the Department of Undoing Child Healthcare and Education, or DOUCHE.
“DOUCHE is going to be epic. It’s going to really clean everything out,” he said.
