Saturday Night Live has revived its Donald Trump impression, with newcomer James Austin Johnson taking over the role from Alec Baldwin.
The latter spoke a year ago of being “overjoyed” at the possibility of losing the role after Trump lost the 2020 US presidential election to Joe Biden, having played the role since the 2016 election.
However, the weekend’s episode (November 6) saw Johnson take over the mantle of playing the former US president during the show’s cold open, having also impersonated Biden in recent weeks.
In the skit, which lampooned Jeanine Pirro’s (Cecily Strong) Fox News show, Austin’s Trump appeared as he ranted on subjects such as Chris Pratt, Mario, Eternals and Dune.
“These PC folks, you can’t please them. They don’t even like Chris Pratt as Mario, and you know what I’m very close with Mario, very close with Luigi,” he joked. “You know our wives play golf together.”
Tweeting after the US election last year, Baldwin admitted: “I don’t believe I’ve ever been this overjoyed to lose a job before!”
The actor added: “It will be comforting when we have a President who doesn’t Tweet twice as much as I do … They’re gonna need an enormous shipment of tissues sent to Mar-a-Lago.”
Saturday’s episode of SNL was hosted by Succession star Kieran Culkin, with Ed Sheeran appearing as musical guest and performing songs ‘Overpass Graffiti’ and ‘Shivers’.
Meanwhile, Trump recently launched a new social media platform called TRUTH Social, which has been described as “America’s ‘Big Tent’” social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology”.
The former US president was banned from Twitter earlier this year after encouraging his supporters to storm the US Capitol, telling them to “walk down to the Capitol” as “you will never take back our country with weakness”.
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