Saturday Night Live killed two topical birds with one stone this week, weaving recently ousted AG Pam Bondi into a spoof of March Madness coverage.
The show’s Cold Open began as a riff on Charles Barkley (played by Kenan Thompson) recently using his platform as an NCAA March Madness commentator to criticize the treatment of immigrants in the United States.
As his colleagues Ernie Johnson (James Austin Johnson), Kenny “The Jet” Smith (Kam Patterson) and Coach Bruce Pearl (Jeremy Culhane) commended Sir Charles’ on-air op-ed, he marveled, “It was the first time I went viral without a prescription for Valtrex.”
Having had a taste of that power (and liking it), Barkley kept segueing from hoops talk into unrelated opinion pieces, always beginning with, “This might get me fired…” and/or “I’m gonna choose my words really carefully….”
For one, he not-so-boldly opined that “war is terrible” and “we need to end it.” He also suggested that the Artemis II space mission is a “waste”… and “we need to end it.”
Barkley then got a touch political by bringing up Pam Bondi getting fired from her post as Trump’s Attorney General.
That brief commentary, Ernie Johnson interjected, triggered the FCC’s Equal Time rule, and suddenly Bondi (Ashley Padilla) herself was seated at the sports desk—startling the gents.
“It’s so great to be here at the final four… years of this country,” Bondi hissed.
She contended she was “amazing” at her job and noted she “made history as the first woman to be fired as Attorney General. I shattered that glass exit door!”
Bondi then broke down crying, saying, “I miss it already!” She also clearly was upset that, as documented by an instantly iconic snapshot, “they threw my [Dept of Justice] headshot in the trash like it was the Epstein Files!”
Watch the sketch below:
The NCAA Final Four Postgame Show pic.twitter.com/IdxQ8zYwu8
— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) April 5, 2026
SNL‘s Cold Open comes just days after Donald Trump dismissed Bondi from her post, publicly praising her tenure while offering little explanation for her removal. Behind the scenes, however, reports pointed to mounting frustrations over her handling of key investigations and internal pressure to pursue political targets more aggressively.
