Saturday Night Live‘s season 51 premiere kicked off with Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission attack dog warning cast members not to go too far with their jokes—or face the consequences.
Trump (James Austin Johnson) began by interrupting Secretary of Defense and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) instructing high-ranking members of the military on some new rules.
“No fatties, no facial hair, no body hair. Just hot, shredded, hairless men who are definitely not gay,” Hegseth said. “Because this is serious. We are facing the greatest threat to freedom and democracy the world has ever known, and we all know what that threat is.”
“Late night TV!” Trump answered, referring to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s pressure last month on ABC and parent company Disney over Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“I’m just here keeping an eye on SNL making sure they don’t do anything too mean about me. They better be careful. I know late night TV like the back of my hands; not looking great right now!” he said, revealing the all-too common smear of non-matching makeup on the back of his right hand.
After roasting the show’s beginning—”we all know they were never going to let [Jost] do the whole opening by himself”—Trump said of the Weekend Update co-host: “I thought he would be with his friends at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.”
“That’s sad. We love the Saudis because they like to ‘saw these’ journalists in half,” Trump joked, amid Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle and other comedians receiving criticism for taking money to perform in a nation with a dismal human rights record. “That’s the kind of thing that would kill over there.”
Trump then addressed another big development since the season 50 finale in May: the contents of a creepy 2003 birthday letter to eventual sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that The Wall Street Journal reported was from Trump, but which he (dubiously) denies writing.
