Saturday Night Live went after Donald Trump’s $5,000 election-year promise Saturday night — but the president was far from the only Republican caught in the crossfire.
The show’s October 3 cold open imagined Republican strategists desperately trying to film campaign ads ahead of the midterms, only to discover that virtually every GOP figure they brought in created a new problem.
First up was Marco Rubio, played by Marcello Hernández.
He was supposed to record a Spanish-language appeal to voters.
Instead, SNL’s Rubio began complaining about Trump.
“Oh my God! He tricked us!” Rubio exclaimed in Spanish.
The parody had Rubio complaining that Trump had promised one thing on Venezuela before shifting attention to Iran — turning what was supposed to be a Republican campaign pitch into an increasingly frantic attack on his own administration.
Then came JD Vance.
Jeremy Culhane’s Vance barely managed to introduce himself before the Republican strategists decided they had heard enough and quickly moved on.
Things did not improve when they brought out Mitch McConnell.
Played by Mikey Day and wheeled into the scene, SNL’s McConnell simply sat there, staring silently as the strategists waited for something — anything — resembling a campaign pitch.
Eventually, he raised two fingers in a peace sign.
When prompted to speak, McConnell mistakenly began SNL’s famous opening line before being stopped.
Then Pete Hegseth arrived.
Colin Jost stormed into the scene as Trump’s Pentagon chief and immediately turned the Republican campaign ad into a parody of Hegseth’s recent rhetoric about the military.
After shotgunning a non-alcoholic beer, Jost’s Hegseth launched into a bizarre macho campaign appeal followed by what the sketch described as “weird slam poetry.”
“No weak, no woke, no DEI, no guy-on-guy,” he chanted, before continuing through a list aimed at mocking Hegseth’s culture-war messaging.
And just when the Republican strategists appeared ready to give up, James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump arrived.
“Let me cook,” Trump announced.
That is when SNL turned to a real Trump campaign promise.
At the Republican midterm convention in September, Trump promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every adult American citizen if Republicans retain control of Congress.
SNL had its version of Trump make the same pitch — and then added the punchline.
“If the Republicans win, I’ll give everyone $5,000,” Johnson’s Trump said.
Then came the joke:
“And that is not a bribe because I have no intention of following through on that promise.”
The sketch kept going.
SNL’s Trump told voters to imagine that he himself was on the ballot and unveiled a new slogan: “Imagination makes a MAGA nation.”
But SNL still had one more joke waiting.
The Republican strategists asked Trump to record a message they could play if the GOP wins the midterms.
“We did it. We won!” he declared.
Then they asked him to record a different message in case Republicans lose.
Trump looked into the camera.
“We did it. We won!”
Same message. Different result.
And with that, SNL managed to turn one Republican campaign-ad session into a rapid-fire parody of Rubio, Vance, McConnell, Hegseth and Trump — finishing with the president’s very real $5,000 promise as the setup for one of the night’s biggest political punchlines.
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