Saturday Night Live kicked off its final episode before the holiday break with a cold open featuring “A Christmas Message from the White House.”
Yes, it was yet another sketch boasting Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump.
Here, President Trump was joined in the Oval Office by First Lady Melania, who wished the American people a “Merry Christmas.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“That’s right, you can finally say that again, because the War on Christmas is over,” offered Trump. “It will soon be replaced by the war on North Korea.”
The president then went into a riff on his “absolutely amazing first year in office”—one that’s about to include “the biggest, fattest tax cut” that American have ever seen. Now, POTUS says, he can settle down and act presidential—“that is, until Don Lemon says something mean about me and I tweet the actual N-word.”
Melania then directs Trump’s attention toward the tree, with the Trump clan honoring all the “haters and losers” this year by hanging ornaments with their faces on them on the “Tree of Shame.”
Enter Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway, with an ornament bearing the face of former FBI Director James Comey. And Aidy Bryant’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders, with ornaments of Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci. Beck Bennett’s Mike Pence enters with an ornament of Mike Flynn.
Then, a not-so-gentle rapping, rapping on the White House window.
“It’s Omarosa!” screams Trump, afraid of the volatile White House “aide” who, as The Daily Beast reported, tried to “storm the residence” after learning of her ouster.
“Hey! Let me in! Too late, I see you in there, Donald! Nobody kicks Omarosa out the White House!” shouts Leslie Jones’ Omarosa, before knocking out a Secret Service agent and being dragged off the premises.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka, played by Scarlett Johansson, enters. (As you probably recall, Johansson’s Ivanka featured in one of SNL’s more imaginative sketches this year: a mock ad for a perfume called “Complicit.”)
“Ivanka, you made it,” says Trump. “But where’s Jared?”
“He’s packing a go bag before the FBI arrives,” she replies.
“I’m going to miss him,” adds Trump.
“Me too. I’ll always remember that one time I heard him talk,” says Ivanka, bearing an ornament with the face of Roy Moore, an accused sexual predator of teen girls who her father endorsed even after she said of him, “There’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.”
“As I said, there’s a special place in hell, and we’re all there. I also tried to make a Steve Bannon ornament but his face wouldn’t fit, so I brought you a Madball instead,” she says.
Then, Omarosa returns in full-on Say Anything mode, hoisting a boombox over her head playing The Apprentice theme song. “Take me back!” she yells, but her screams fall upon deaf ears.
It was, unfortunately, another lame Trump sketch by SNL, and one that hinted at what could have been. Why not focus the sketch more on Jones’ Omarosa and her increasingly insane attempts to storm the White House? Or Baldwin’s Trump, dressed as Santa, being creepy toward Johansson’s Ivanka? Or Melania’s terribly bleak Nightmare Before Christmas?
Let’s hope SNL ups their game considerably in 2018.
