The final “SNL” of 2022 opened, unsurprisingly, with a cold open sketch that took aim at Donald Trump’s “big announcement” launch of NFT trading cards earlier this week.
James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump appeared, introducing himself as “hopefully your favorite president of all time” before talking about his NFTs which he pronounced “nifties,” adding, “I call ‘em nifties ‘cause they’re so neat.”
This launched into a showcase of various increasingly ridiculous trading cards that would appear onscreen accompanied by Johnson’s description of each: “For example, when I was an astronaut. Or me riding an elephant. You’ll get me melting Biden’s ice cream with my laser eyes.”
He added, “When you buy a card, you don’t get to pick which one you’ll get. It might be me on the cover of a romance novel. Me doing the splits. Me doing Titanic. Or even me as Jessica Rabbit. Wow, look at the legs on her. Perhaps I would be dating her if it weren’t me.”
Something many late night hosts already globbed onto earlier this week was how similar these NFTs are to Pokemon cards, but Johnson’s Trump took great pains to convince viewers this is not the case.
“Trust me, it’s not Pokemon. I mean absolutely no disrespect to my good friends Raichu,” before trailing off into a list of names of various Pokemon characters.
“Now I know what you’re wondering, can they fight?” Trump said about the cards that are definitely not Pokemon. “Yes. Who will win between Trump crossing the Delaware and Trump Matrix?”
At this point, Donald Trump Jr. (played by Mikey Day) arrived to introduce his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, which gave Cecily Strong one last chance to play the character during her final episode of “SNL.” She was there to push her own new product, a Christmas CD.
“Thank you, and I know you’re gonna love this Christmas album that I’m calling, ‘Now That’s What No One Calls Music.’”
The sketch wrapped up with Trump running down his own Christmas list, which was listed as follows:
Merry Christmas
Ghosts
Don DeSantis
Grinch
Netanyahu
Avatar
Feliz Navidad
Johnson’s spot-on impression then saw him connecting the various seemingly random words through a stream-of-consciousness monologue.
As for how he got to “Avatar,” Johnson’s Trump said, “Now you look at Sam Worthington, he’s a great father he’s got four blue kids now. I’ve got four kids too, five if you include Tiffany.”
Watch a clip from the cold open in the video above.
