Saturday Night Live put up its best cold open in quite a while this week, with a comedic peek at what the GOP’s boot-lickingest politicians really might really think about Donald Trump.
In the wake of Trump’s big South Carolina victory, Jim Risch (Mikey Day), Marco Rubio (Marcello Hernandez), Lindsey Graham (James Austin Johnson), and Tim Scott (Devon Walker) gathered together for cocktails, tater tots, and some awkward conversation about their feared leader.
Risch opened the door to some potential Trump smack-talk when he admitted, “Sometimes I do not know what my party is doing. I mean, I’ve been pushing for Ukraine funding for the past six months. It’s essential to American security. And Trump just killed it with one phone call. The man doesn’t care about this country one iota. Sometimes I think he’s downright dangerous.”
“And you just endorsed him, right,” asked Rubio.
“Yeah. Big time. Big time,” Risch assured him. “He’s great.”
Rubio found it hard to disagree with that assessment, and even harder to live down the infamous “Little Marco” nickname that still haunts the Florida senator to this day.
“I’ve never been able to shake it,” said Rubio. “People still yell at me in airports. He kind of made my life hell.”
“And you endorsed him, right,” asked Risch.
You probably know where this is going.
Risch and Rubio were soon joined by Graham and Scott—two more Republicans whose lives have been made more hellish for knowing Trump. But like their colleagues Idaho and Florida counterparts, they too seemed stuck in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome where even Trump’s worst qualities are somehow praiseworthy.
When Scott was asked about the embarrassing Fox News Town Hall he was a part of with Trump last week, the South Carolina senator assured everyone that he absolutely had the upper hand the whole time.
“[Trump] didn’t make me say that I hate [Nikki Haley],” Scott explained. “He said, ‘You must really hate her, you know.’ But, you all saw what I did, right? I stepped right up to the mic, and I said, ‘No, I just love you.’”
“You showed him,” Graham assured his colleague—before reminding his fellow senators about the time Trump doxxed him. “Yep, back in 2015. He gave out my personal cellphone number in his speech to all his supporters [and] had thousands of his people call me up to yell at me, threatening my life. Had to get a new phone!”
Risch was able to one-up that story by telling everyone that “one of the January 6 rioters—I’m sorry, one of the January 6 tourists—pooped on the floor of my office.”
Despite their near admissions of being terrified to go against Trump (“sometimes I think his ass is gonna live 1,000 years,” said a visibly upset Graham)—and the shared embarrassment they’ve faced in service to him—they all agreed that Trump is a great man. And, according to Graham, possibly even “the greatest president since Reagan.”
