The cold open of “Saturday Night Live” brought out one of the long-running series’ former megastars to rehash a recent Cabinet fight between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio.
In the opening sketch, James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump attempts to make peace with Marcello Hernández’s Rubio. He addresses Rubio’s concerns about Musk’s widespread power to run roughshod over the federal government and even gives his one-time opponent a chance to shine.
“I am very close to a deal with the Panamanian government to retake the Panama Canal,” Hernández as Rubio says.
“Eh, I don’t want it anymore, you know?” the faux-Trump replies. “Seems like a hassle.”
At that point, Mike Myers bursts into the Oval Office as a ball of weird tics meant to represent Musk. After Myers’ Musk repeatedly does an off-putting dance, Trump calls the move the billionaire’s “least unsettling trait” before extending the olive branch in the form of mutual roasts.
“Elon, how do you have 20 kids, but I’ve never seen you with a chick?” Johnson’s Trump says. “Marco? Short and gay, classic.”
In a voice-over of Musk’s thoughts, he worries that his “personal net worth just dropped by $100 billion,” hitting the last part of the line in the familiar voice of his character Dr. Evil and drawing applause from the audience.”
The real-life meeting that “SNL” was sending up had no pat resolution.
In the Thursday clash between Rubio and Musk, the Tesla head accused the secretary of state of not doing his part to reduce government spending. Per the New York Times, Musk said Rubio was “good on TV,” implying that Rubio was only useful as a talking head. Rubio countered that over a thousand State Department employees had taken the so-called “fork in the road” buyouts. Per the outlet, Rubio asked if Musk would like to hire back the resigning employees so that he could properly fire them.
The argument came to a close after Trump backed Rubio, saying he was doing a “great job” in the early days of the president’s second term.
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