Saturday Night Live has mocked Donald Trump’s disappointment at being passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, while also targeting Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth over a reported plan to livestream the execution of former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan.
The subjects were combined in the latest edition of the programme’s Weekend Update, where Colin Jost and Michael Che turned their attention to the Trump administration.
Jost lampooned the president’s apparent frustration over the Nobel decision as Trump continues to promote his record on international conflicts. The award and the people involved in selecting its recipient were also used to question his image as a peacemaker.
The segment then took a darker turn with jokes about the reported proposal to broadcast Hasan’s execution. Hasan was sentenced to death for the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, in which 13 people were killed and 31 wounded.
The prospect of televising the execution has raised questions about whether capital punishment could be turned into a public spectacle, a premise Che used for further comic material.
Hegseth was also portrayed by Jost in the show’s cold open. The sketch featured Jost as an agitated Hegseth aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, wearing a bandolier of Fireball whiskey and briefing sailors on events they had missed while deployed.
James Austin Johnson appeared as Robert F Kennedy Jr, mimicking the Health and Human Services secretary’s distinctive voice and displaying exaggeratedly large forearms.
Trump’s Nobel ambitions, the execution livestream proposal and the Pentagon’s makeover all featured in the programme’s political satire. The White House was contacted for comment but had not responded.
