President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to redirect America’s — and the government’s — attention away from his alleged involvement with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was the focus of Saturday Night Live‘s November 15 cold open.
“Epstein White House Briefing Cold Open” was inspired by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s real press conference on November 12, allowing cast member Ashley Padilla to unveil her impression of Leavitt.
“As you all know, there was no news this week, nothing happening with the president, no weird information was revealed,” Padilla’s Leavitt insisted. Emails released by the House Oversight Committee on November 12 included Epstein saying Trump “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” with a victim identified by the committee.
“Why does President Trump’s name appear in so many of them?” CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins (Chloe Fineman) asked Leavitt about the emails. “Trump has askedthe DOJ to investigate Democrat’s ties to Epstein, but is anybody investigating Trump?”
Leavitt replied that Trump’s only crime was “loving too much…and possibly too young.”
Donald Trump speaks out in SNL‘s “Epstein White House Briefing Cold Open”
“I am hiding nothing. Just enough to make it extremely suspicious,” Trump (James Austin Johnson) chimed in from the podium. “But let me ask you a question: If there was something incriminating in the files, then why would I cover them up?”
“Wait, isn’t that exactly why you would cover them up?” asked a bewildered reporter (Kenan Thompson).
“If I was innocent, wouldn’t I just release all the files?” Trump tried again, before pivoting to, “Jeffrey Epstein, I barely knew the guy, OK? As evidenced by the thousands of pictures of us together, dancing and grinding our teeth at various parties, always leering and pointing at something just off camera — probably a book we’re excited to read!”
Ashley Padilla and James Austin Johnson dressed as Karoline Leavitt and Donald Trump.
“So you said you kicked Epstein out of Mar-A-Lago, but he said he was never a member,” another reporter (Jeremy Culhane) asked.
“Yeah I said I kicked Jeffrey out because he was a pedophile, but then I also said I didn’t know he did anything wrong,” Johnson’s Trump replied. “So it’s kinda hard to square that circle unless you realize that Trump exists across many timelines. It’s the Trump multiverse theory, we just happen to be living in the worst possible one.”
Watch “Epstein White House Briefing Cold Open” from Glen Powell’s November 15 episode above, and stream episodes from every episode of Saturday Night Live on Peacock anytime.
SNL‘s November 15 episode also featured an Epstein-focused “MacGruber” sketch
Despite longtime efforts to delay the release of Jeffrey Epstein’s Justice Department files, largely led by Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, NBC News reports that a bipartisan consensus has reached the 218 signatures that force a House vote to release them. That means that if the vote goes through the week of November 17, it’ll happen while Saturday Night Live is on break for Thanksgiving — so the show provided plenty of commentary on the story this week.
That included the three-part return of Will Forte’s MacGruber, who found himself in a real pickle when his team mate (Host Glen Powell) kept furnishing a classified copy of the Epstein client list … and MacGruber was so rattled by a name he saw, he forgot to defuse that bomb in time.
“Give me that list or I will furlough you!,” MacGruber screams, before demanding a pen to make redactions. “I will furlough you so friggin’ hard!”