Saturday Night Live cast member James Austin Johnson reprised his role as President Trump in the latest cold open, this time to mock Trump’s controversial military attack on Iran.
“Good evening and happy World War III to all who celebrate,” said SNL’s Trump.
“As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon,” said Trump, before reluctantly adding, “for like the last 15 years or something.”
The joke referenced Trump’s official explanation for invading Iran: to preemptively protect America from an Iranian nuclear strike.
Trump posted an eight-minute Truth Social video at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, telling viewers that Iran was “developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.”
Singing to the tune of Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit “War," SNL’s Trump added, “War: What is it good for? Distracting from the Epstein files!”
The real President Trump has faced growing scrutiny over his friendship with renowned sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. So far the Department of Justice has released over 3.5 million pages of Epstein-related documents; Trump’s name has been mentioned in them over a million times.
Trump has vehemently denied having had any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, although SNL has repeatedly mocked those denials since the first batch of Epstein files were released in November.
SNL’s Trump also offered two explanations for why he chose to announce a war with Iran at 2 a.m. on a Saturday:
“One: it’s after the stock market closes for the weekend,” Trump said. “And two: it’s to cause immeasurable fear, rage, and chaos in the SNL writers’ room. Those guys were going crazy."
Trump joked that the original cold open would’ve been about his State of the Union address on Tuesday, but the writers were forced to rewrite it with less than a day before the live show aired.
“Put the whole thing in the trash and start fresh,” Trump said. “We love that for them.”
