Saturday Night Live Takes America Home for the Holidays and It’s Painfully Funny

Plus: Don’t miss Kate McKinnon as Greta Thunberg.

Saturday Night Live’s opening sketch this week once again managed to sum up the desperately divided state of American politics, in six painfully accurate minutes.

It takes place around three dinner tables: There’s an ultraliberal family in San Francisco, California, praying to “gender-neutral spirits,” a conservative family in Charleston, South Carolina, praying to “original American Jesus,” and a black family in Atlanta, Georgia, praying to “historically correct black Jesus.” 

In San Francisco, Trump has “violated the constitution.” In Charleston, he’s simply committed “the crime of being an alpha male who actually gets things done.” When a young Chris Redd suggests talking politics in Atlanta, Kenan Thompson responds, “Oh, you mean how Trump is definitely getting impeached and then definitely getting reelected? I’m good.”

Aidy Bryant’s snowman narrator finally chimes in to wrap things up: “Those three families may seem different, but, see, they have one important thing in common. They live in states where their votes don’t matter. Because none of them live in the three states that will decide our election. They’ll debate the issues all year long, but then it all comes down to 1,000 people in Wisconsin who won’t even think about the election until the morning of. And that’s the magic of the electoral college.”

Then: enter Greta. Watch the full sketch above.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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