Saturday Night Live took on soaring gas prices this weekend, opening with a family road trip that’s derailed when the pump hits $5 a gallon—before James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump abruptly halted the sketch to spin his own explanation.
Mikey Day and Ashley Padilla played a husband and wife on a road trip with their two kids (Sarah Sherman and Marcello Hernández) to Grandma’s house. Having pulled over for gas, Mom fretted to Dad, “Fill up? Not all the way, though, right?” Dad said they must, even at $5 a gallon, at which point Mom announced that one of the kids would have to stay behind to live in the gas station mini-mart.
When the son asked why gas costs so much, James Austin Johnson‘s Trump leaped into the scene to answer, “The Epstein Files! Kidding. But possibly not”—as the action and characters behind him froze in place.
“It’s me, Donald Trump…,” he continued. “You might remember me from such campaign promises as ‘Lower gas prices,’ and ‘No more wars.’ Psych!”
Trump alluded to musical guest Harry Styles’ old band, by saying that gas prices were going “one direction—down,” and then likened the United States’ hate of Iran to “ballet and opera, and we’re Timmy Chalamet.”
After making some meta quips about the cast members behind him—still playing kids, “Marcello is like a little Chihuahua; sounds racist, but it is”—Trump mentioned the antiperspirant-challenged Jake Paul getting booed at his Mike Tyson fight. When Trump said, “We don’t like hearing boos,” Colin Jost‘s SecDef Pete Hegseth poked his head out of the family’s car, asking: “Did someone say booze?!” He then stepped out, in “size 16 Florsheim shoes gifted to him by POTUS,” while cans (of “road soda”) spilled out the door.
“If you’re wondering why I was in the back seat of this random family’s car,” Hegseth correctly surmised, “I’ll tell you the same thing when asked about our strategy in Iran: I don’t know.”
Hegseth chided the “gay-bies in the media” for being “unpatriotic” with their reporting of unsavory war facts, after which Jost and JAJ teamed up for this week’s “Live from New York!”
This week’s Cold Open marked the fifth time that Johnson’s Trump has interrupted a sketch about someone or something else, to bloviate as the action/cast froze behind him in shadow. The gimmick was first used almost three years ago, toward the end of the Hollywood strikes-shortened Season 48, as Trump crashed the Last Supper. But it hadn’t been employed since April of last year, when Trump interrupted the Founding Fathers’ signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“Family Road Trip” also delivered Jost’s sixth Cold Open this season as Hegseth, and his fourth time as the chest-puffing Secretary of Defense out of the last six episodes.
Watch the Cold Open above.
