This week’s Saturday Night Live cold open began with a parody awards ceremony called The Trumps, a familiar SNL device that reimagines the Oscars through the narcissistic logic of Donald Trump. The premise itself was broad and accessible: Trump hosting an awards night celebrating himself, his administration, and the institutions he claims to have bent to his will. As with most SNL cold opens, the sketch was designed to function on multiple frequencies at once, mixing easy political satire with sharper, culturally specific jokes aimed at audiences fluent in online discourse.
One of those sharper moments arrived via a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo by J. D. Vance, played by Mikey Day. In the sketch, Vance jokes that if he becomes president in 2028, he would be the first US president with a beard in a hundred years. Trump immediately snaps back: “Speaking of your ‘beard’, how is your wife Usha?”
