"Fun, right?": Trump executive orders mocked on "Saturday Night Live"

The sketch centered around Trump's governing by executive order, touching on Bill Belicheck, JK Rowling and others

By Alex Galbraith

Nights & Weekends Editor

Published May 4, 2025 11:31AM (EDT)

James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC)
James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC)

President Donald Trump signed nearly as many executive orders in his first 100 days as Joe Biden did in his entire term. Given that breakneck pace, it's fair for "Saturday Night Live" to imagine what it would be like if he did a silly one. 

The cold open of the sketch series focused on Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) and Stephen Miller (played by Mikey Day) running through a series of increasingly ridiculous executive orders. 

After introducing Trump's aggressive opening act as "FDR in reverse," Trump appeared to say that "Elmo has been apprehended by ICE."

"Brought to you by the letter L for El Salvador. He's not coming back," Johnson's Trump said. 

Miller appeared to kick off the signing ceremony, entering to Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" and looking suitably vampiric. The set-up gave "SNL" the chance to try out several riffs, with Miller handing over executive orders to bring back Columbus Day, pardon JK Rowling and normalize large age gap relationships. 

The latter was a piss-take of former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. The legendary coach made headlines recently when he appeared for an interview with CBS in the company of his much younger girlfriend. 

"We're going to make girlfriends young again," Trump said. "Old men can now date far younger women...But in reverse, it's quite disgusting."

Elsewhere in the skit, Trump banned ghosts and mandated that the word recession be shortened to "recess."

"Fun, right?" Trump said. "America, get ready for a historically long recess. I call tetherball."

Watch the sketch below:


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