Saturday Night Live kicked off its Dec. 17 edition by parodying Donald Trump’s video announcement earlier this week that he’s 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 “pertaining to my life and career.” They portray Trump as an astronaut, cowboy, race car driver and superhero.
Kicking off Saturday’s SNL, Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, began by addressing the news and quoting from the actual video.
“This is Donald Trump, hopefully your favorite president of all time, better than Lincoln, better than Washington,” Johnson as Trump said, a direct quote from the real video, adding “frankly, better than Ezra,” a reference to the alternative rock band whose heyday was in the ’90s.
“You may have seen this week, I made a major announcement, I’m doing my first official collection of Donald J. Trump Digital Trading Cards — or to use the technical term, ‘nifties’ … because they are so neat,” he said, mispronouncing NFTs.
“Trump cards are each $99. Seems like a lot, seems like a scam, and in many ways it is,” he said, adding, “You can also get them for free by going online and looking at it.”
He went on: “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 as a superhero.
SNL went on to mock the cards by showing Trump in a variety of situations, from the iconic bullet-dodging scene in The Matrix to his doing splits to being dressed up as Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “Wow, look at the legs on her. Perhaps I would be dating her if she weren’t me,” he said.
SNL‘s Trump went on to introduce his “third least embarrassing child,” Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day), who went on 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 No One 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 up Trump sharing his own Christmas list. “Merry Christmas, OK? We’re all saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again, right? I brought that back. Because Christmas is very important to Christians, and to Jewish I think, also,” he said.
Later on in the episode, “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost joked of Trump: “It’s such a funny move to get into NFTs after the whole market just crashed. It’s like getting into Kanye now.”
Saturday night’s SNL featured host Austin Butler and musical guest Lizzo. It was also revealed that Megan Thee Stallion will appear on the Jan. 7 episode, after SNL returns from its winter holiday hiatus.
Updated 10:56 p.m. Dec. 17: Added Colin Jost’s “Weekend Update” quote and Megan Thee Stallion’s Jan. 7 appearance.