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SNL Parodies New York City Mayoral Debate as Trump Crashes With 'Phantom' Riff

With Zohran Mamdani portrayed as the frontrunner, the segment doubled as local satire that drew fresh attention from Trump.

Overview

  • Miles Teller played Andrew Cuomo, Ramy Youssef stepped in as Zohran Mamdani, and Shane Gillis appeared as Curtis Sliwa in a mock NY1 debate moderated by Kenan Thompson’s Errol Louis.
  • James Austin Johnson’s Trump interrupted to declare the race was really about him, joked his bagel order was a “Big Mac with a hole in the middle,” and sang a bit of “The Music of the Night.”
  • Youssef’s Mamdani leaned into a TikTok-ready persona and sweeping pledges—free health care, affordable housing, free Wi‑Fi—before undercutting them with the line that together voters would learn “the answer is no.”
  • Kam Patterson cameoed as Eric Adams with a comic endorsement that mangled Mamdani’s name and visibly irked Cuomo in the sketch.
  • Online reaction was mixed, with praise for hyper-local jokes and complaints about another Trump cameo, as coverage also noted Gillis’s prominent return after his 2019 dismissal from the show.