Help keep Salon independent

“Saturday Night Live” rips Trump’s lawyers in cold open

The show's first episode of 2024 had a lot of Trump headlines to riff on, namely that Alina Habba is the worst

Senior Culture Editor

Published

James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live," January 20, 2024 (Courtesy of NBCUniversal Media)
James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live," January 20, 2024 (Courtesy of NBCUniversal Media)

Kicking off their first episode of 2024, "Saturday Night Live" tackled Donald Trump's latest court room headlines, bundling them all up to riff on in their cold open, with cast member James Austin Johnson jumping back in as Trump, and Chloe Fineman taking on Alina Habba, Trump's lawyer in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, who made a widely criticized attempt at defending her client this week.

"The judge has been very unfair from the beginning," Fineman as Habba says. "And I want to make this perfectly clear, I am new at this, and I am learning."

Tossing it over to Johnson as Trump, he says what most who witnessed her fumbles in court have been thinking, "You're great on TV. Maybe the worst lawyer I've ever had, which is quite an accomplishment. Look at this team, this is the bottom of the barrel folks."

Joking that it's a "red flag" that he's in the lead for president and his legal team is "the best he can get," SNL's Trump reminds the lawyers that they're not getting paid and tells him that he'll see them later at Shakey's.

Watch here:

 

 

By Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is Salon's Senior Culture Editor, where she helps further coverage of TV, film, music, books and culture trends from a unique and thoughtful angle. Her work has also appeared in Vulture, Vanity Fair, Vice and many other outlets that don't start with the letter V. She is the author of one sad book called "Something Is Always Happening Somewhere." Follow her on Bluesky: @WolfieVibes

MORE FROM Kelly McClure

Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Related Articles