“Saturday Night Live” finally kicked off its 45th season this week, and it began they same way many episodes have over the past four seasons: with Alec Baldwin playing Donald Trump.
This time, Baldwin’s Trump was very concerned with the whole impeachment situation, and so he spent the seven-minute sketch calling folks up from the Oval Office as he attempted to find someone do make the impeachment thing go away.
What followed was a fast and furious sequence in which it felt like the entire “SNL” cast made appearances — though, to be clear, it only felt like it.
The festivities began with Trump ringing up his personal attorney (and former NYC mayor) Rudy Giuliani, who was played here by “SNL” regular Kate McKinnon. They had probably the best interaction of the sketch, which went like this, starting with Giuliani asking Trump what’s going on.
Trump: “I’m being impeached. It’s the greatest presidential harassment of all time. I would know. I’m like the president of harassment.”
Giuliani: “Relax, Mr. Trump. We’ve got nothing to worry about. Nobody’s going to find out about our illegal side dealings with the Ukraine.”
Trump: “Good.”
Giuliani: “Or how we tried to cover up those side dealings.”
Trump: “Great.”
Giuliani: “Or how we planned to cover up the cover-up.”
Trump: “Rudy, where are you right now?”
Giuliani: “I’m on CNN right now. Let me put you on speaker.”
From there we had Baldwin’s Trump call up: “SNL” cast member Aidy Bryant as Attorney General William Barr; Beck Bennett as Vice President Mike Pence; Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as Trump’s sons; new “SNL” featured player Bowen Yang as Kim Jong-Un; Cecily Strong as Fox News host Jeanine Pirro; Chris Redd and Kenan Thompson as Kanye West and Don King; and Liev Schreiber as himself.
But Trump called Schreiber because he wanted to hire Ray Donovan as his impeachment fixer. Schreiber informed Trump that Ray Donovan was a fictional character, after which Trump asked him for John Wick’s number. After also learning that Wick is fictional, Trump asked for Liam Neeson’s info. Schreiber replied that, actually, Neeson might be able to help him.
You can watch the sketch in full in the video embedded at the top of this post.