How does one mine a deadly, merely hours-old attack on Iran for laughs?
That was the question facing NBC’s Saturday Night Live this weekend, as its Cold Open found President Donald Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) and SecDef Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) discussing the U.S. and Israel’s joint bombing of Iran starting 2 a.m. Saturday morning.
“Happy World War III to all who celebrate,” said JAJ’s Trump—”FIFA Peace prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker!”—as he stepped to the podium.
“I launched this attack after me and my Board of Peace decided that we were bored of peace,” he quipped. After all, “Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for, like, the last 15 years or something, so we had to act now. And we’re doing war.”
As Edwin Starr once mused, war, what is it good for? “Distracting from the Epstein files!” answered Trump.
The president then addressed his “MAGA voters who are upset and saying, ‘This is not what I voted for.’ Well, you did. Don’t you know who I am? I’m me,” he shrugged. “Even I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
“People beg for Trump, then when you get him, you don’t like him,” he continued, “I’m like new Star Wars movie. They see the trailer for Mandalorian & Grogu and say, ‘Never mind, I don’t want that.'”
As for the Saturday-morning timing of the first strikes, Trump said, “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. They probably had a big State of the Union Address thing we were going to do. Not anymore!”
Trump turned the mic over to Hegseth, who explained that the military operation’s “Epic Fury” name was chosen to perfectly fit a quartet of tattooed knuckles. Though he had his done backwards, “Those are my least problematic tattoos!” he admitted.
“Bottom line,” Hegseth huffed, is that “all of you should be thanking us. We took out a horrendous, horrible leader who was oppressing his own people—”
Trump then creeped back into frame to note, “But don’t get any ideas!”
Watch the full Cold Open at the top of this post.
