The Saturday Night Live cold open saw James Austin Johnson returning as Donald Trump, two days before the inauguration, this time talking about the TikTok ban.
About an hour before the show aired, TikTok went dark as a new U.S. law was about to go into effect that requires its Chinese parent to sell the social media platform’s U.S. operations, or face being restricted on app stores.
The premise of the SNL open was MSNBC’s coverage of inauguration weekend, with Rachel Maddow and other anchors struggling to focus on the substance of Trump’s policies but perpetually distracted by his many wild proposals and Truth Social posts.
Then, with the TikTok news, the anchors were unable to resist going to coverage of Trump’s statement.
“Yes, we love TikTok, don’t we?” Trump said. “We love TikTok. We used to hate it, but then it, quite frankly, in many ways, got me elected.” Then, Trump went into the “weave,” or the tendency of his pontificating to go into stream of consciousness.
“We also love the Rizzler, don’t we? Folks trying to take the Rizzler away from us. It’s so sad. They want then the hell out of here.”
More to come.
