Saturday Night Live: Jon Hamm excels as Trump heads to The White Lotus

The Guardian

13-04-2025

Ahead of Easter, Saturday Night Live looks back at Jesus's cleansing of the temple. He vows to ride the holy area of money, which brings out president Donald 'Jesus' Trump (James Austin Johnson), who once again compares himself to the son of God: 'Many people are even calling me the Messiah because of the mess I-a made out of the economy.'
Trump brags about his 'beautiful' tariffs, which were 'working so well I had to stop them … now everything is back exactly how it was minus a few trillion dollars.'
As he's done in the past, Trump breaks the fourth wall to make fun of the cast frozen behind him – he signals out Ego Nwodim for her big hit performance last week – before tying things back to the upcoming holiday: 'We love Easter, we love bunny, we love hunting for eggs just like everyone's doing in the grocery store right now, because they cost a billion, trillion dollars.'
This was one of the better cold opens in a while, mostly because, for as much as Johnson's Trump rambled, it homed in on one topic: his insane bungling of the economy.
Show favorite Jon Hamm hosts for the fourth time. Although his last go-round as host was 10 years ago, he has been on the show a lot since then, having racked up 14 cameos. He extolls the virtues of cameos, which can help take 'a medium sketch to a marginally better than a medium sketch, or when a monologue is feeling aimless, and it needs a jolt of energy'. Right on cue, out comes Oscar winner Kieran Culkin to prove his point. The two bicker over their respective awards, penis sizes, and which of their acclaimed cable dramas was better. Hamm is right at home on the SNL main stage.
Check-to-Check Business News Channel offers 'financial new to regular folk living paycheck to paycheck'. Whereas the S&P means nothing to the hosts or their audience, other signs – such as 'candy bars are up from 'sure, baby,' to 'put that back',' are dire signs. Meanwhile, healthcare spending remains at zero, while millions of Americans are investing in healthcare alternatives such as 'just lay down, take an Advil, or just pray it goes away'.
Another financial expert advises Americans to prepare for tariff price increases by switching from name brand products like Perrier, Cap'n Crunch, and DiGiorno to knock-off brands: Uncle Bubble ('made from pure Tennessee tap water'), Sergent Munch ('lower rank, lower price, flavor bad'), and DeVonte ('it's not delivery, it's DeVonty').
This is one of SNL's sharpest pieces of political comedy in a long time, managing to make light of America's increasingly grim financial predicament in a way that average people will actually relate to. Also, the moment where Hamm and Nwodim's news anchors laugh off the idea of ever repaying their student loans and start singing the chorus to En Vogue's 1992 hit single, My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It), is a season highlight. They have great chemistry with each other.
A new Please Don't Destroy sees the guys playing investigators in a police procedural. The grim search for a councilman's abducted niece is interrupted by Hamm's detective, who gets way too excited over the prospect of ordering pizza for the long work night ahead. Chastised by the other cops, he turns into a little kid, crying about how 'Maybe I'll have a soda and that's all I'll have from the pizza party!' When the lead detective casually mentions that he's already ordered three cheese, three Hawaiian pizzas, the rest of the squad also freak out. Hamm is at his goofy best here, as is everyone else. Indeed, this might be the funniest PDD to date.
On the boringly titled game show Guess the Correct Answer, Hamm's contestant is terrified he'll do something embarrassing that will go viral and ruin his life. His fears immediately come to pass when he bungles simple answers and ends up divulging deeply personal secrets about his racism, small penis and 'unstoppable, unceasing' lust for his daughter's friends. Simplistic and kind of lazy as written, but Hamm's gung-ho delivery keep the laughs coming.
HBO's The White Potus sees Trump attempt to unwind at an exotic vacation resort, only to fall into a suicidal funk. Elsewhere on the island, heretofore absent Ivanka (Scarlett Johansson) immediately bails on her newfound Buddhism, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (Jon Gries) pervs out on the idea of 'America get bent over and railed by other countries,' RFK Jr (Hamm) rambles about fluoride in water to his confused, buck-toothed girlfriend (Sarah Sherman) before darting off to kill and eat a monkey, Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernández) is ditched by his mean girls Pam Bondi (Ashley Padilla) and Kristi Noem (Heidi Gardner) only to be seduced by Vladimir Putin (a returning Beck Bennett), Eric Trump (a returning Alex Moffat) is his usual dumb self, while Don Jr (Mikey Day) has a sex dream about his ex-wife's current beau, Tiger Woods (Kenan Thompson).
This is a welcome return not only of some former cast members, but also the blending of hot button political and pop culture topics that used to be a regular fixture on SNL, but which has, for whatever reason, mostly been absent for the past few seasons. But good as it is, the fact that it didn't have Don Jr and Eric engage in any brotherly love, a la this season of The White Lotus, feels like a cop out.
Musical guest Lizzo performs her first set of the night. Bleating out eye-rolling, self-affirming platitudes while wearing a shirt that reads 'Tariffied', her performance plays like a liberal version of Morgan Wallen's from two weeks ago: all unconvincing cultural signaling set to rote pop tunes.
On Weekend Update, Colin Jost picks up where the cold open and previous sketch left off, noting that the president's 90-day tariffs pause 'May not seem like a long time, but remember, Trump has only been president 82 days and it already feels like a goddamn decade.'
Michael Che invites Chinese trade minister Chen Biao (Bowen Yang) on to discuss Trump's trade war with China. Chen could care less about Trump's 145% tariff on Chinese goods, asking 'which side is more willing to endure hardship for the glory of their nation: the one that's been around for thousands of years, or the one sending Katy Perry to space?' He also takes a quick dig at JD Vance by hawking his own memoir, Peasant Elegy. There are some good lines here, but Yang's snotty schtick gets in the way.
Later, Jost brings on cast member Emil Wakim to give his thoughts about what it means to be an American these days. He comes out waving flags just to buy some goodwill, before admitting that he's conflicted: 'I know we're bad, because my life is so good there's just no way it's cruelty-free.' He has some decent material about ordering from Uber eats and hipster anti-capitalist hypocrisy, which is sure to go over poorly online.
Wakim's segment feels abrupt, probably because this week's Update includes a rare third guest spot. Sarah Sherman plays Jost's stressed out accountant Dawn who, between pulling out her own hair and driving her head through the set, takes shots at him over his various sexual and criminal improprieties. It's a credit to Sherman that this regularly recurring bit hasn't yet worn out its welcome.
A gay couple (Yang and Hamm) get angrily defensive when their confused friends ask where and how they got their newly adopted (or rather, clearly stolen) baby. This attempt to send up progressive identity politics might felt relevant a couple of years ago, but the culture has shifted enough that it no longer does.
Scenes of interracial young people partaking in 'active fun in slow motion are revealed to be the number indicator of herpes. Other signs include 'dancing in an outdoor beer garden with strings lights', 'winning a carnival game on the first try,' or 'hanging out with exactly one white person, one black person, one Asian person, and one Latin person.' A solid sendup of medication ad tropes.
The show wraps up in a corporate office during a new employee orientation ice breaker. The new hires take turns sharing a fun personal fact about themselves. Hamm's employee, Greg, brings things to a screeching halt when he introduces himself by revealing, 'My mom killed my dad naked on TV.' More bits of information come out over the course of the conversation: the show was Jackass; it was funny and sad; and a party donkey, Port-a-potty, and Raven Simone were involved. The initial gag is funny, but the rest of the sketch loses the thread.
While there were a few low points to tonight's episode – the baby sketch, Lizzo's first song – this was one of the stronger episodes of the season. The focus on Trump's disastrous economic policy gave it a strong through-line, the guest appearances made for some fun surprises, and Hamm was expectedly great.