This week’s Saturday Night Live started off with a visit to the Trump White House, where Alec Baldwin’s Trump was celebrating Christmas with his staff. Or, more accurately, forcing the remaining members of his administration to hang an ornament on Trump’s “Tree of Shame” with the face of one of his enemies, which sort of counts as a Christmas celebration.. The gang’s all here, from outright enemies like James Comey to friends-turned-enemies like Mike Flynn to recently-minted enemy Omarosa, who doesn’t rate an ornament, but shows up in person outside the windows, trying desperately to get back into the sunlight of Trump’s love.
The highlight is an unexpected visit from Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka, a role she memorably inhabited in an ad for the Trump daughter’s signature fragrance (“Complicit”) when she hosted in the spring. That part didn’t require much of an impersonation, which is exactly how much of an impersonation Johansson does this week. Still, she gets the best line, revisiting Ivanka’s statement about Roy Moore shortly before her father endorsed him: “As I said, there’s a special place in hell, and we’re all there.” Second place goes to Trump’s recap of the Moore campaign, one of those things that would be funny if it weren’t exactly what happened:
Poor Roy. I thought for sure he would win. Until he lost. Then I said I always knew he would lose. But at least America knows that I finally supported an accused child molester.
Besides Johansson, it’s a highlight reel of the Saturday Night Live cast’s impersonations from Trumpland: Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as the Trump boys, Aidy Bryant as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Beck Bennett as Mike Pence, and, above all, Kate McKinnon in dual roles as Kellyanne Conway and Jeff Sessions. It’s also something of an in memoriam tribute all the Trump hangers-on who fell off the gravy train this year, from Sebastian Gorka to Carter Page. God willing, we’ll never have to see Sean Spicer again, but it’s kind of sad to realize we’ll never see Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer impersonation. Or maybe we will. Unfortunately, Jeff Sessions’ Christmas message has the ring of truth:
Merry Christmas! Everybody is going to get away with everything!
