So the shutdown ended. Hooray! Now the government can get back to the real work: trying everything they can to pretend president Donald Trump wasn’t to blame. This being the first SNL after it ended with Trump agreeing to a deal that was the same deal he could have agreed to 35 days ago, it of course kicked off with a parody of state TV: Fox News.
Alex Moffet took a break from playing a bumbling, endearingly idiotic Eric Trump to take on Tucker Carlson, who did his best to spin the disaster that was the border wall showdown into one of the president’s unambiguous wins.
Referring to Trump’s “heroic end to the shutdown,” Moffet invited on a revolving door cast of Fox News colleagues and Trump administration stooges. Jeanine Piro talked about how happy the employees were to work without pay, reminiscing over her run-in with TSA employees whose rude hand gestures she interpreted as affirmations.
And who to play Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who this week was in a duel with his boss to see who was more out of touch with regular hard-working Americans? Kate McKinnon, the show’s go-to for ghoulish, obliviously evil white men.
“They could have liquidated some of their stocks, or sold some of their paintings,” McKinnon growled while doing a Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange stare. “Even if they sold one of their lesser Picassos, that’s still going to get you through a week of yacht maintenance.”
All the while, the sketch was building up to the surprise superstar cameo guest: Steve Martin, who’s wild and crazy enough to nail just indicted Trump adviser Roger Stone. Carlson tried to get Stone to pretend he was too old and feeble and not prone enough to shirtless selfies to be in prison.
But Stone loves the spotlight too much to keep quiet. By the end, Martin’s Stone was shouting “Pardon?” — not in reaction to Carlson’s latest question, but to Trump, who could always get him one of his presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards. Not that that would happen in real life.
