Saturday Night Live didn’t waste a second going after the week’s political circus, and Donald Trump—played again by James Austin Johnson—was right in the center of it. Johnson’s Trump, who just last week casually stood by as a man collapsed in the Oval Office sketch, barreling into a moment that mirrored a real-life viral clip, returned with even more chaotic energy.
This time, he crashed a mock White House press briefing held by the show’s version of Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Without warning, “Trump” strolled in and immediately started confessing to… well, almost nothing.
“I am hiding almost nothing – just enough to make it extremely suspicious,” he said after a reporter pressed him.
From there, the bit only got wilder. Johnson’s Trump insisted he “barely knew the guy as evidenced by thousands of pictures of us together dancing and grinding our teeth together at various parties.” The delivery hit exactly the awkward, rambling register SNL leans on whenever it parodies Trump trying to distance himself from someone in the news.
When confronted with an email calling him “the dog who hasn’t barked,” he shot back with his own animal classification: he’s “more of a cub, or possibly an otter.”
Then came the closer—an offer no one in the room asked for: he announced he’d be releasing all of the Epstein files, but with a catch. Each confidential document would cost $800.
It was peak SNL Trump: shameless, erratic, and delivered with the kind of off-the-rails bravado that makes the impression stick. Whether the episode was taking a swipe at political headlines, conspiracy chatter, or just the absurdity of all of it, the sketch didn’t tiptoe. It went straight for the gut punch.
Watch the full cold open below:
