Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update addressed Donald Trump’s courtroom appearances during his criminal trial in New York, as well as Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s admission in her forthcoming memoir that she shot and killed her puppy.
Co-anchor Michael Che recalled how Trump had “complained that none of his supporters were in court with him,” where he’s accused of breaking state law for falsifying business records and federal campaign finance law.
“But that’s not true,” Che explained, referring to a photograph of the former president seated behind the defense table with several members of law enforcement nearby. “What about all those cops?”
Colin Jost, after taking a jab at Trump for appearing to fall asleep several times during his trial, added that Trump, “for the first time in his trial, wrote a message on a yellow post-it note and handed it to his lawyer while he was making an argument.”
“The post-it read simply: can’t pay you,” Jost joked.
As for Noem, whose account of her execution of her puppy, Cricket, and of her goat has spurred widespread condemnation and probably ruined her chances of being Trump’s running mate, Jost suggested she should’ve taken another route.
“In a new book, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem revealed she once shot a dog that was ‘untrainable.’ That’s insane. If a dog is untrainable, you don’t shoot it. You give it to President Biden,” he joked, alluding to how one of the president’s German Shepherds has reportedly bitten Secret Service agents at least two dozen times.
Jost was then skeptical of Noem’s plummeting running mate chances.
“I don’t know. Something tells me Trump would fully support killing disobedient pets,” he joked while a photo of Mike Pence showed on screen.
Later in the segment, Marcello Hernandez appeared as Noem’s other dog, Cricket VII, and had nothing but kind words for his owner. However, he exhibited signs that he was under duress, like by slipping Jost a confidential note clarifying that he wasn’t being sarcastic when he said Noem “kills all her animals.”
Also during Weekend Update, Jerry Seinfeld stopped by the set as “The Man Who Did Too Much Press,” making some self-deprecating quips about the press tour for his directorial debut, Unfrosted.
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
