With Easter approaching, it seemed appropriate for “Saturday Night Live” to resurrect a favorite bit: a scene from the Bible that is interrupted by a comic monologue from James Austin Johnson playing President Trump.
This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Jon Hamm and featuring the musical guest Lizzo, began with what looked like a straightforward re-enactment of the Cleansing of the Temple, with the role of Jesus played by Mikey Day. “This will not stand,” Day said, overturning a money changer’s table. “I will rid this place of all its money.”
The action paused so that Johnson could enter as Trump. “Remind you of anyone?” he asked. “Wow. I also got rid of money last week. But instead of one temple, I did whole country. Maybe even the globe. The money’s gone.”
Johnson continued: “Hi, it’s me, your favorite president, Donald Jesus Trump, comparing myself to the son of God once again. You know, many people are even calling me the messiah, because of the mess-I-ah made out of the economy.”
The financial turmoil, he said, was “all because of my beautiful tariffs — they’re so beautiful. They were working so well that I had to stop them.”
Johnson said that the stock market “did a Jesus — it died.”
“Then on the third day, it was risen,” he continued. “And then on the fourth day it died again, possibly never to return, just like Jesus. Where the heck is that guy? Come back, get me out of this. And Jesus Christ is a name we’ve been saying a lot lately. We’re saying it a lot. We look at our 401(k) and say, ‘Jesus Christ, where did it all go?’”
Johnson threw in a few topical jokes about Passover and Easter, saying, “We love hunting for eggs, just like everyone’s doing in the grocery store right now, because they cost a trillion, billion dollars.”
Finally, Johnson asked that we “remember the lesson that Mister Jesus taught us when he went buck wild on those money changers: We must never mix religion with commerce.”
He added, “You can read all about that in my Trump Bible. Now made in America, so it costs $1,300 and it falls apart even faster.”
News you can use of the week
It hasn’t been a pleasant time to be watching TV news unless you’re a fan of large numbers preceded by minus signs, arrows pointed emphatically downward and the color red. If you’d prefer a news program that isn’t any more soothing but at least tries to commiserate with you while apprising you of current events, there’s CTCBC, the Check-to-Check Business Channel, whose anchors (Hamm and Nwodim, equipped with their fact-packed chyron) will keep you caught up with the financial bellwethers that really matter, like the price of boxed mac and cheese, or the increase in the cost of candy bars (“from, ‘Sure, baby,’ to ‘Put that back”).
‘White Lotus’ parody of the week
Unlike, say, everyone on the internet, “S.N.L.” had largely avoided talking about the latest season of “The White Lotus,” the much-dissected HBO anthology series. But this weekend, “S.N.L.” put all the material it had been stockpiling into a big noisy blender, mixed it with some lorazepam and came up with “The White POTUS,” a filmed segment that was a satire of both the show and U.S. politics.
Johnson, once again, was President Trump — this time, a silent stand-in for Timothy Ratliff, the shady financier played by Jason Isaacs. Chloe Fineman was the first lady, Melania Trump, who nonetheless spoke with the North Carolina accent of Parker Posey’s Victoria Ratliff: “Can you imagine how awful it would be if America lost all its money and no one in the world respected us anymore?” she asked. (A reaction shot showed the Newsmax headline Johnson had been surreptitiously scanning on his phone: “Trump Triggers Worldwide Recession.”
Watch for return appearances from “S.N.L.” alums Alex Moffat (as Eric Trump) and Beck Bennett (as Vladimir Putin, the Russian president); Scarlett Johansson, the “S.N.L.” spouse and frequent host (as Ivanka Trump); “White Lotus” cast member Jon Gries (as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick); and at least another week’s worth of “White Lotus” discourse online as a result.
Weekend Update jokes of the week
Over at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the economic fallout of the tariffs imposed by President Trump.
Jost began:
This week, President Trump tried to rescue the economy from the disastrous policies of whoever was president last week. On Wednesday, Trump announced he was pausing most tariffs for 90 days. Now 90 days may not seem like a long time, but remember Trump has only been president for 82 days and it already feels like a goddamn decade. Just hours before Trump paused the tariffs, he tried to calm investors by posting, “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” Be cool? This is the global economy. It’s not like we got too high and we’re trying to get through dinner with our parents. The CEOs of many tech companies who supported President Trump’s campaign have said they were surprised by all of his tariffs. Well, yeah, he hardly ever mentioned them. [He played a clip montage of President Trump talking about tariffs during the 2024 campaign.] It’s like listening to Bubba Gump talk about shrimp.
Che continued:
Trump responded to the fallout from his tariffs, saying sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something. Yeah, but this feels like we took a whole bottle of medicine with a glass of vodka and laid in a warm bath. It was reported that Elon Musk personally appealed to President Trump to stop his tariff plan. And it worked! The stock market went up, like this: [He showed a photo of Musk making a hand gesture that has been compared to the Nazi salute, and imitated the gesture.]
Weekend Update desk segment of the week
Heard any good jokes about the economy lately? Well, for those who could handle even more, Bowen Yang was on hand as his character Chen Biao, a Chinese trade minister who had plenty of sassy thoughts about the growing trade war between his country and the United States, “I’m just wondering, which side is more willing to endure hardship for the glory of their nation?” Yang asked. “The one that’s been around for thousands of years? Or the one that’s sending Katy Perry to space?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/arts/snl-financial-chaos-white-lotus.html
