As befits a week that was as completely unhinged and bizarre as the one we just experienced, the opening portion of Saturday’s Weekend Update on “SNL” was a frantic race through what felt like 900 different scandal updates that we got in the Trump administration over the last few days. As always, hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost were up to the task.
You can view this portion of Weekend Update from the latest episode of “SNL” in the video above, and below you can read the transcript of that opening chunk.
Colin Jost: “Well, the clock might be running out on Trump’s presidency, so you know what that means — they’re finally putting in Rudy! But instead of making a great play, this Rudy immediately tackled his own quarterback. Giuliani appeared on Fox News and straight-up admitted that Trump knew about the Stormy Daniels payment, which was maybe the best confession I’ve seen on TV that didn’t end with ‘created by Dick Wolf.’ This Stormy Daniels payment has turned out to be the loudest hush money in history. And during his ‘Kings of Dementia’ comedy tour, Giuliani also said that the hush money was, quote, funneled through a law firm. Dude, ‘funneled’ is not typically a word innocent people use when talking about money. No one says, ‘Yeah, my grandma funneled me $5 on my birthday card.’ ”
Michael Che: “Rudy Giuliani is claiming that President Trump only learned a week ago that he was reimbursing Michael Cohen’s payments to Stormy Daniels in $35,000 installments. I have a couple of questions. Like, what kind of billionaire pays for stuff in installments? You’re the president of the United States. Why are you paying for sex like it’s a NordicTrack? And how did y’all land on $130,000? That’s such an oddly specific number. I asked Stormy to come on ‘Update’ and explain it, but her agent said no because if she’s seen on camera with a black guy, her price goes down.”
Colin Jost: “Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, said that he was speechless after Giuliani said that Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen. In fact, Avenatti was so speechless that night, he only appeared on 20 shows on six different networks.”
Michael Che: “The New York Times has published a list of 49 questions that Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President Trump. The first one is, ‘Colluder says what?’ Trump is calling this probe a trap, but questions are only a trap if you’re lying. If you were to ask your husband, ‘Where were you last night?’ and he said, ‘Bitch, you trying to trap me?’ he’s probably lying.”
Colin Jost: “But let’s be clear about this — Trump and his legal team are clearly the ones who leaked these questions. And I figured out why. Trump’s been so desperate to find a decent lawyer that, at this point, he’s just crowdsourcing his legal strategy. He’s just throwing the Mueller questions out there like, ‘How do you guys think I should respond?’ It’s basically the same strategy Lay’s used to pick a new potato chip flavor. Which could be a smart approach for Trump, or he could end up like Lay’s with Biscuits and Gravy.”
Michael Che: “And if I may ask the FBI directly: why is this taking so long? I mean, look at Trump’s team. You can’t beat them? They look like they have a commercial that goes, ‘Have you been hurt in a triple fall?’ Even if you don’t have enough evidence, just frame them. Whatever happened to that? Are there different FBIs for white people than black people? Because if the FBI was this incompetent against us, Martin Luther King would have died a lot later, peacefully in his bed, on top of his mistress.”
Colin Jost: “This week, President Trump’s former doctor — who, by the way, I loved on ‘Twin Peaks’ — said that the 2015 letter which described Trump as the healthiest individual ever elected president was dictated by Trump himself. Which also explains why Trump’s blood pressure was listed as ‘haters over losers.’ White House lawyer Ty Cobb has announced that he’ll be stepping down at the end of May. Cobb will return to his own job of challenging you to a hot air balloon race around the world.”
Again, you can watch “SNL” Weekend Update’s rundown of the news in the video embedded at the top of this post.