Overview
- Saturday Night Live opened its Dec. 20 episode with James Austin Johnson’s Trump delivering a holiday address that riffed on the week’s political headlines.
- The parody zeroed in on Trump’s announced Patriot Games for high school athletes, joking it was conceived to distract from the Epstein documents.
- A visual gag displayed heavily redacted Epstein pages as the faux president read isolated words to claim exoneration.
- The monologue lampooned the decision to add Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center and teased mock rebrandings of national monuments.
- Coverage notes the Justice Department’s partial Epstein-file release featured extensive redactions, reporters and House Democrats have questioned an apparent removed photo, and news reports say Trump is not accused of wrongdoing in the released material.