Saturday Night Live kicked off its last show of 2017 with a commemorative rundown of President Donald Trump’s first year in office — and more specifically, of his administration’s failures, of the game of international brinkmanship he’s played with North Korea, and of all people he’s fired or who have quit since he was inaugurated in January.
“We’re going to be giving Americans the biggest, fattest tax cut they’ve ever seen,” boasted Trump, played by Alec Baldwin, referring to the unpopular tax reform legislation Republicans are currently working to pass. “It might even make me a real billionaire.”
After that opening zinger, the sketch shifted into a roll-call gag that featured everyone from Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway and Aidy Bryant’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Cecily Strong’s Melania Trump and Beck Bennett’s Vice President Mike Pence, among others. Trump declared that he wanted to “remember the haters and losers that I destroyed this year” with a special Christmas “tree of shame”; his various staff members then each presented him with ornaments adorned with the faces of ex-FBI Director James Comey, ex-White House communications staffers Sean Spicer and Anthony Scaramucci, former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, and recently defeated Senate candidate from Alabama Roy Moore.
Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the administration’s latest staffer to make a dramatic exit, didn’t get an ornament of her own, but she did get a Leslie Jones impersonation of the report that Omarosa tried to get back into the White House after being dismissed and tripped security alarms in the process.
The skit also touched on the recent rumor that Trump wants to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.
Robert Mueller “is next,” Kate McKinnon’s Jeff Sessions said, while sitting atop a mantle dressed as an Elf on the Shelf. Sessions presented Mueller as a tree-topper, declaring, “And everybody is going to get away with everything.”
“I’m right here, father.” #SNL pic.twitter.com/1X8vqgN9Pr
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 17, 2017
The sketch also featured one special guest: Scarlett Johansson as Ivanka Trump. Ivanka arrived without her husband Jared Kushner in tow — and when asked where he was, SNL took a swipe.
“He’s packing a go-bag before the FBI arrives,” she said.
