Saturday Night Live couldn’t get enough of the presidential election in its season premiere this week. After a solid cold open sketch parodying the first debate, the show presented a political version of Family Feud that pitted Team Trump against Team Clinton.
It was a battle of the surrogates. On one side, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway (portrayed brilliantly by Kate McKinnon), Ivanka Trump (host Margot Robbie), Chris Christie, and Trump’s model leader, Vladimir Putin.
And while Darrell Hammond has ceded the role of Trump to Alec Baldwin, he was back on the show leading the Democratic side as Bill Clinton. Joining him were comedian Sarah Silverman (newcomer Melissa Villaseñor), Cecily Strong as next week’s host Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Larry David, returning with his now iconic Bernie Sanders impression.
Robbie’s vacuous Ivanka Trump was one of the sketch’s many highlights, telling host Steve Harvey (Kenan Thompson), “What a pleasure it is to be here, Steve. This is fun. I love fun. Every day I schedule 20 minutes of fun.” Later, she somehow found her way over to the Clinton side so she could be closer to the former president. “We’re just getting acquainted,” Bill Clinton said, creepily.
Meanwhile, McKinnon nailed Kellyanne Conway’s remarkable spin skills when she buzzed in and then said, “I do not have an answer even though I did buzz in so I’ll do what I usually do which is talk and talk until people forget the question, then make an insane claim about Hillary Clinton.”
And David’s Bernie Sanders gave Clinton a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement. “Senator Clinton is the prune juice of this election,” he said. “She might not seem that appetizing but if you don’t take her now you’re going to be clogged with crap for a very long time.”
Asked for reasons why someone might be late, he said, “Maybe you’re late because people like Jill Stein call you in the middle night asking you for advice. That woman drives me nuts! For someone who cares about the environment, she sure doesn’t mind asking people to throw their votes away, huh?”