Things under former President Donald Trump were often so strange that Saturday Night Live hardly had to fuss about reality to turn the reality star into a joke.
And, well, they were up to their old tricks on Saturday night. Fantastic impressionist and cast member James Austin Johnson opened the show as Trump, hawking crappy, cartoonish NFTs, which of course, the real former president did.
The show’s cold open featured Johnson as Trump doing an infomercial for the trading card NFTs.
“Trump cards are each $99, which seems like a lot,” Johnson says. “Seems like a scam, and in many ways it is, but we love Trump cards.”
One hallmark of Johnson’s version of Trump is that he’s absurd. Well, absurd in a different way than the real former president. True to form, Johnson’s Trump launches into an explanation of his NFTs that touches on Pokémon, Avatar, and Ron DeSantis looking like a Roblox.
Per usual, Johnson’s impression was a delight and you just never know where things are going to go until he gets there. Most hilarious of all, perhaps, is the impossibility of parsing what SNL made up and what came from reality. The NFT cards from the real world were just that crappy and weird.
