SNL Cold Open Parodies Donald Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT Video – The Hollywood Reporter
Saturday Night Live kicked off its December 17 edition by parodying Donald Trump’s video announcement earlier this week that he is selling NFTs, or what he calls “Trump Digital Trading Cards.”
In a video announcement earlier this week, Trump described the NFTs, which sell for $99 and reportedly sold out on the first day, as “about my life and career.” They portray Trump as an astronaut, cowboy, race car driver and superhero.
Starts Saturday SNLTrump, played by James Austin Johnson, began by addressing the news and quoting from the video itself.
“This is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington,” Johnson said as Trump, a direct quote from the real video, adding “honestly, better than Ezra,” a reference to the alternative rock band that had its heyday in the 90s.
“You may have seen this week that I made a big announcement, that I’m doing my first official collection of Donald J. Trump Digital Trading Cards – or to use the technical term ‘nifties’ … because they’re so pretty, ” he said, mispronouncing NFT’s.
“Trump cards are $99 each. Seems like a lot, seems like a scam, and in a lot of ways it is,” he said, adding, “You can also get them for free by going online and looking at it.”
He continued: “You get me as a cowboy or me melting Biden’s ice cream with my big laser eyes,” a reference to the opening of the real Trump’s video showing laser beams coming out of his eyes like a superhero.
SNL continued to mock the cards by showing Trump in a variety of situations, from the iconic bullet-dodging scene in The matrix until what he does splits into being dressed as Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “Wow, look at her legs. Maybe I would be with her if she wasn’t me, he said.
SNLTrump went on to introduce his “third least embarrassing child,” Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day), who continued to hype up the cards along with a new Christmas CD by his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle (played by Cecily Strong in her final SNL episode). She appeared to announce that the album is called NOW that’s what nobody calls music, before singing an off-key lyric from “Silent Night, Holy Night”.
They then left the stage, with Trump saying: “There they go. What a terrible couple.”
The segment ended with Trump sharing his own Christmas list. “Merry Christmas, OK? We’re all saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again, right? I took that back. Because Christmas is very important to Christians, and to Jews, I think, too,” he said.
Later in the episode, “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost joked about Trump: “It’s such a funny move to get into NFTs after the whole market just crashed. It’s like walking into Kanye now.”
Saturday night SNL featured host Austin Butler and musical guest Lizzo. It was also revealed that Megan Thee Stallion will appear on the January 7 episode, following SNL coming back from winter break.
Updated 10:56 p.m. Dec. 17: Added Colin Jost’s “Weekend Update” quote and Megan Thee Stallion’s Jan. 7 appearance.
