Saturday Night Live opened the show this week with a recreation of The Cleansing of the Temple, a significant moment in the Bible where Jesus Christ kicks out the merchants and money changers who were turning the house of worship into a “den of thieves.”
However, just as Mikey Day, who plays Jesus in this cold open, is getting started, James Austin Johnson’s President Donald Trump interrupts everything.
And SNL’s resident Trump impersonator may have just given his best performance yet.
James Austin Johnson as Trump goes buck wild for more than five uninterrupted minutes on everything from his tariffs to Easter, the price of eggs, and even which SNL members were cast as Jesus and his disciples in the recreation frozen in time behind him.
James Austin Johnson’s use of puns here to compare Jesus and Trump, Easter, and Trump’s tariffs reach biblical proportions.
“You know, many people are even calling me the Messiah because of the Mess-I–ah made out of the economy,” Johnson’s Trump says.
