The 2025-2026 “Saturday Night Live” (“SNL”) season promises many thrills, exciting skits, and musical guests every Saturday night. There have been a multitude of celebrity guest stars who have performed live on “SNL,” including Sabrina Carpenter, Bad Bunny, and Finn Wolfhard. One of the most popular segments of the show are the political cold opens. The political cold opens feature parodies of different events that have happened over the week. The skits star James Austin Jones as Donald Trump, Colin Jost as Pete Hegseth, Marcello Hernandez as Marco Rubio, and Jeremy Culhane as JD Vance. The recent skits that have come out in January have sparked enthusiasm and backlash from both sides of the political spectrum.
The first skit that was aired in January was called Cabinet Meeting Cold Open. The skit was a parody of a meeting that took place at the white house where Trump explains what went down at the white house during the week. He went on to talk about how he won a “fake award” and joked about how he kidnapped the president of Venezuela. He goes on to call his cabinet his “little freaks, various monsters and nightmares.” Later in the skit, after various shots at Trump and his team, Pete Hegseth walks into the room, chewing protein powder out of a massive tub. He
screams into the microphone, calling everyone fat and saying that he again kidnapped the president of Venezuela illegally. A sophomore named Sadie Clark thought it was a “great start to the 2026 ‘SNL’ year [she] think[s] it was funny and commented on a lot of things happening in today’s society.” Clark’s favorite part of the skit was “Kristi Noem part in its reference to ice and some of the actual questions they ask to future ice officers.”
The second skit that aired was called Trump Awards Cold Open. Trump hosted an award show where people who are uncomfortably close to him were invited to possibly win one of his awards. In the beginning, he talks about all of his great photographic accomplishments, such as making it on the Epstein list and staring into a camera while someone in his office passed out. Throughout the skit, while people accept the award, such as Kristen Noems, he finds any excuse in the book to remove the award from the recipients an accepts it for himself. However, the week that this skit aired, a lot of controversial events occurred,
and ‘SNL’ seemed to have played it safe and stayed clear from the current events. This sparked a lot of controversy within the ‘SNL’ fan base, with them wanting ‘SNL’ to take a stand. McNicholas, however, disagreed and thought that “I don’t think ‘SNL’ played it safe with this skit because it is very current to the way Trump acts.” McNicholas believed that the main goal of the skit was “to show how insane Trump has become with wanting all the awards and not worrying about his main job, which is being the president. The skit was to poke fun at how insane Trump has become with what he is working for, and they did an incredible job.”
For an epic comeback, the final January post ‘SNL’ aired was called ICE Meeting Cold Open. Pete Davison played White House Border Czar Tom Homan. The skit was him meeting with the ICE agents who have been killing innocent protesters and asking them to “do better,” meaning “don’t get caught on camera.” McNicholas “ think[s] this one was better because the acting was better in my opinion, and the ‘ice agents’ are exactly like the ones who are working right now.” The skit shed a light on many issues, but the one that stood out to McNicholas the most was “how ICE agents act now, they just use violence all the time.”
McNicholas also believed that the iconic comedian “Pete Davidson did a great job playing a political character because he acted just like the leader of ICE and did a great job discussing how poorly the agents are acting, treating people, and how they are instilling more fear than help [in] people.”
These skits are one way people are speaking out during this current administration.
