“Saturday Night Live” is being dragged for its “classless” skip on President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s heated Oval Office meeting — including a goofy appearance by Mike Myers as Elon Musk.
The cold open attempted to spoof the tense meeting between the two leaders this past week in which Trump warned Zelensky that he was “gambling with World War III.”
But, critics on social media slammed the scene as “not funny” and “classless.”
In the NBC show’s rendition, James Austin Johnson’s Trump and Bowen Yang’s Vice President JD Vance can be seen talking over Zelensky, who was portrayed by Mikey Day — while Marcello Hernandez’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio cowers on the couch.
“You want to say a few words, maybe tell Mr. Putin how much you love him?” Trump asks Zelensky before Vance jumps in to berate the Ukrainian leader, asking him, “What happened to thank you? You haven’t said thank you to us once in the past 15 seconds.”
“You think you’re getting any money from us after your little outburst today?” Vance asks before reciting Gene Wilder’s famous lines from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.”
Trump jumps in, dismissively asking Zelensky, “Who shows up to the White House in a T-shirt and jeans like a garbage person?”
Seconds later, Musk barrels onto the screen wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a jacket while carrying a chainsaw — replicating a move the DOGE Chief actually made on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month.
Myers — playing Musk — goofs off with the chainsaw and awkwardly jumps into the air before Trump tells him, “Elon, we love your outfit. Very official and respectful.”
“Donald, what are you doing in my office? You know I’m president now, right?” Musk said before exclaiming, “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! But maybe not, maybe not!”
“Legalize comedy, legalize comedy!” Musk chants while jumping into the air.
Referencing his controversial role at DOGE, where Musk helps eliminate government waste, he said, “We are firing the nonessential employees. Like air traffic controllers.”
“Yes,” Trump said, “sure, some of the planes are going to land upside down. But then the luggage falls right into your lap and you’re ready to go. It’s efficient.”
(The Trump administration has not fired air traffic controllers as part of its cutbacks, and is instead trying to hire more.)
Musk and a DOGE staffer then said that they are producing a new Department of Undoing Child Healthcare and Education, or DOUCHE.
Hours after the show concluded on Sunday, social media users took to X to slam the sketch.
“SNL continues their agenda of not being funny anymore,” one person wrote.
“Might as well be called DNC Live,” another critic added.
While many found the sketch to be funny, other social media users took issue with Myers’s particularly goofy portrayal of Musk.
“Epic FAIL for SNL again. Making fun of someone with autism who not long ago hosted your show? Classless,” one person wrote.
Others also took offense to a T-shirt Myers wore during the show’s closing that read, “Canada is not for sale,” referencing Trump’s proposal to make the US’s northern neighbor the 51st state.
“We’re not BUYING it,” one social media user, clearly in support of Trump’s mission, wrote, with another chiming in: “We will just take it, we don’t need to buy it.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
