It’s Easter weekend, so naturally “Saturday Night Live” did an Easter-themed cold open. But the news has been crazy this week, and so “SNL” found a way to combine Easter with Donald Trump.
In this case, the show basically barely parodied the disgraced ex-president with a cold open sketch that had James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump impression interrupt a recreation of the Last Supper to compare himself to Jesus Christ.
Or rather, he compared himself to “Jesus of Azkaban,” which of course kinda sounds like something the real Donald Trump would say.
The sketch began with a narration explaining the context for the Last Supper, then came the sketch, featuring pretty much the entire current “SNL” cast in what is probably the one trillionth parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting, with Mikey Day portraying Jesus. We assume you’re familiar with the final dinner Jesus Christ had with his followers prior to being arrested and then crucified, and as such can pretty much guess how this part of the sketch went. If not, please, we beg you, read a book.
Then shortly after the part where Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him, he says, “Though I have committed no crime, I will be arrested.” At this point, they all froze and out came Johnson as Trump.
“Sound familiar?” he asked. “A famous wonderful man arrested for no reason at all. If you haven’t put it together folks, I’m comparing myself to Jesus again and what better time than on his birthday, Easter.”
Johnson’s Trump complained that he is “being persecuted on a level, the likes of which the world has never seen, even worse than the late, great Jesus,” before declaring he and Jesus are a lot alike, especially since “we’re both white Americans.”
Johnson’s Trump bragged that while Jesus (according to the Christian Bible) rose from the dead in three days, “I would have done it faster,” and then he noted another similarity between himself and Jesus: “He had big, big rallies just like me, and a lot of his followers got in big, big trouble just like mine.”
Things continued like this for a few more minutes – at one point “SNL” borrowed a joke from “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas” by referring to Jesus as a “nepo baby,” and of course there’s also the moment when Johnson’s Trump compared himself to “Jesus of Azkaban,” before the sketch reached the “Live from New York…” part.
You can see a large portion of the sketch here right now at the top of the page.
