After taking an episode off to let wrestler John Cena impersonate the President-elect, Alec Baldwin returned to SNL to play Donald Trump, who’s not going to be very happy about the cold open. Neither will Russia.
Beck Bennett drops by (through the chimney, naturally) as a shirtless Vladimir Putin to deliver presents to Trump, including an Elf on the Shelf. “You just put it right here, next to your internet router,” the Russian Santa suggests before endlessly flattering “Mr. Trump.” Later, Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway introduces Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, played by the always welcome John Goodman. He and “Putty” have a friendly relationship that would rise Trump’s suspicions, if he wasn’t so preoccupied with Vanity Fair.
Speaking of Trump being distracted…
This was the last episode of SNL of the year, and, unfortunately (?), the last time Trump will be able to complain about SNL in 2016. “It was a good show, but it’s not a good show anymore,” said Trump on TODAY. “Nothing to do with me — there’s nothing funny about it. The skits are terrible. I mean, I like Alec, but his imitation of me is really mean-spirited and not very good. I don’t think it’s good. I do like him, and I like him as an actor, but I don’t think his imitation of me gets me at all. And it’s meant to be very mean-spirited, which is very biased. I don’t like it. So I can tweet that out.” Watch the clip above.