The latest Saturday Night Live cold open tackled the war in Ukraine head-on.
After setting comedy aside for the week to honor the struggles and sacrifices of the Ukrainian people as they repel an illegal Russian invasion, the latest episode opened with a sketch presenting the “Fox News Ukrainian Invasion Celebration Spectacular.” Over the course of eight searing minutes, viewers are repeatedly reminded that Fox hosts Tucker Carlson (Alex Moffat) and Laura Ingraham (Kate McKinnon), plus Florida residents Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson), Donald Trump Jr. (Mikey Day), and Kimberly Guilfoyle (Cecily Strong), were only recently expressing support for Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin.
That’s it. That’s the joke. Fox News and its associates in Trumpworld weirdly, monstrously used a pro-Russia framing in the early days of the two-week-old invasion to bash their political opponents at home. The sketch also treats the senior Trump as the sideshow he’s become, with Johnson’s pitch-perfect impression casting a spotlight on the disgraced former president as the bloviating gasbag he really is.
Trump’s supporters might cry “liberal media bias!!” but come on. Since when is it controversial to knock the sheer unsmiling idiocy of openly supporting an enemy of the United States?
