First on LateNighter: Saturday’s early morning U.S.-Israeli joint attacks on Iran prompted a quick change of course at Saturday Night Live, with show staffers scrambling to address the breaking news.
Sources tell LateNighter plans were well underway for a Cold Open set at this week’s State of the Union, with James Austin Johnson‘s Donald Trump delivering his marathon speech as a trademark weave—complete with jokes about the president deflecting from the Epstein files and claiming that Zohran Mamdani was “thirsty” for him.
But with Saturday morning’s attacks dominating the news, the show pivoted early in the day, with writers penning an entirely new sketch based on the eight-minute address Trump posted to Truth Social announcing the start of combat operations in Iran.
The finished sketch nodded to the eleventh-hour rewrite, with Johnson’s Trump remarking of the Saturday-morning timing of the first strikes, “it’s to cause immeasurable fear, rage, and chaos in the SNL writers room… They probably had a big State of the Union Address thing they were going to do. Not anymore!”
JAJ’s Trump went on to say, “Jeremy was in it. Poor Jeremy, he’s got a light show.” (Featured player Jeremy Culhane was indeed set to appear in the scrapped SOTU, as Vice President JD Vance.)
SNL's Trump: "People are asking why we had to strike in the early hours of Saturday. One, it's after the stock market closes for the weekend. And two, it's to cause immeasurable fear, rage, and chaos in the SNL writers room. pic.twitter.com/28wlZ1z0Uf
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) March 1, 2026
While it’s not the first time Saturday Night Live has altered its Cold Open plans—sketches later in the dress rehearsal rundown are occasionally retrofitted with a “Live from New York” tag after a planned opener falls flat—it’s rare for breaking news to prompt a brand-new sketch on a Saturday.
One memorable case came in October 2016, when a planned vice-presidential debate cold open was sidelined by the release of Trump’s Access Hollywood tape a day earlier. In that case, as they did today, the show’s writers scrambled to write a new sketch addressing the breaking news.
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It’s good to appreciate what this crew pulls off every week they are on! With the sensitive split second timing, assembly of props, new actors and blizzards, it’s a lot like a military maneuver itself!
Personally I just love it when writers get props and even move into performance themselves. Comedy is a great introduction to leadership: requires mental agility, courage in spades, and charisma. We’ve seen this in Havel, Zelensky and more. Reagan-not so much- but he wasn’t that funny either.
I hate that guy’s Trump impression. It aims for accuracy instead of comedy, it’s too on the nose. There is nothing funny about it.