It didn’t quite make up for having Donald Trump host Saturday Night Live during the start of his 2016 presidential campaign, but it was something.
As Colin Jost explained on this week’s show, “Barring a reverse Christmas miracle, this is the last ‘Weekend Update’ with Donald Trump still in office.”
“Now, as a president, he was mostly bad, but there were a few bright spots,” the anchor continued when the cheers died down. “So before he is tranquilized and moved like a dinosaur in Jurassic Park, I just want to take a moment to recognize some of his greatest moments in office.”
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With that, Semisonic’s “Closing Time” started playing and SNL shared an oddly cathartic montage of the most embarrassing photos and videos of the 45th president captured over the past four years, from tossing paper towels at hurricane victims to mocking a disabled reporter and everything in between.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened,” Jost said when it ended. “And then probably cry a little bit. I don’t know, I’m still working it out with my therapist.”
From there, Jost and co-anchor Michael Che moved on to the coronavirus pandemic, which is raging harder than ever in the final weeks of Trump’s term.
“Mike Pence received the coronavirus vaccine Friday, which is the first time he’s ever been OK with using protection,” Che said. And then: “Mike Pence said when he got the vaccine shot, ‘I didn’t feel a thing,’ which is also what he told himself over and over again after he saw Harry Styles in that dress.”
Jost then pointed out that the Trump White House has “left it up to the states” to distribute the vaccine. “Which shocks me because, knowing Trump, I thought for sure it would be done through a live Powerball lottery. The ratings would have been insane and it would have been the first White House job Ivanka was qualified for.”
Then, in the surest sign yet that SNL is ready to move on from Trump, Jost delivered a genuinely brutal joke about his successor.
“The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed suggesting that Dr. Jill Biden stop using the term doctor because she has a PhD and is not a medical doctor,” he said. “Though she has at times functioned as a nurse.”
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