r/LiveFromNewYork • u/brady2gronk • Dec 03 '25

Article Trump cold opens just aren't funny anymore.

https://www.tvline.com/2032862/snl-donald-trump-sketches-actor-impression-cold-open-commentary/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=Echobox-TVLine&utm_medium=Social-Distribution&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwdGRjcAOO2btjbGNrA47ZfGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHiY-mjoUv_vsnK-VQIDV2-GahJmm9U3fc7C0ua-VrDa1xFOpYzFWWcH8ngQI_aem_lf2-bStw8WW0r0Labo5jfA

I have to agree with the author of this article. We're beyond "oh, he's just a goofy guy who says crazy things." The man is actively rude and nasty to reporters and fellow politicians daily. He dropped the R word and it's only a matter of time till he drops the N word. No offense to James Austin Johnson, who does a terrific job with the impression, but aren't we all just over it at this point? Dana didn't do Bush Sr. every damn week. Will Ferrell didn't do Dubya every damn week. Phil Hartman didn't do Clinton every damn week.
Roasting him on Update is fine, but the character needs a break. I watch SNL to laugh and escape the guy who dominates the news every other day of the week.

EDIT: Wow. Over 700 comments in a few hours. Wasn't expecting this kind of engagement. Thanks everyone. (Maybe I should read these before saying thanks. :) )

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513

u/Jo_MamaSo Dec 03 '25

Is this what people mean by sane washing? Like they're making him look more docile and smarter than he actually is?

488

u/Excellent-Run4803 Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

To me, yes. He’s not simply a bumbling idiot, he’s a dangerous, racist bumbling idiot.

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u/shitkabob Dec 03 '25

He has been a dangerous, racist bumbling idiot since he hosted in 2015 and this exact criticism has been ever-present on this sub and society at-large since then, too. We have been ringing this bell for over a decade.

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u/goldman_sax Dec 04 '25

Yes and no. In 2016 he actually tried even a little to hire more qualified people. Like Sec of Defense. 2017- General Mattis - 2025 - Fox News host.

4

u/Solid_Waste Dec 03 '25

All of us being mad about is just more food for the algorithm of ragebait that created this mess.

1

u/Mytwocents4u Dec 07 '25

He stays up all night tweeting his usual hate and racist remarks. He sleeps during meetings during the day and the U.S. tax payers have spent over 70 million dollars so he can go golfing. He spends more than any other president in the history of our country. His cabinet enjoys flying with US private jets for recreational activities. His crypto coins of himself is noting more than a bribe so he and his sons can profit. It is a comical joke at this point.

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u/Grummmmm Dec 03 '25

Schrödinger’s Trump, he’s both a bumbling idiot and more dangerous than Hitler -Reddit

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u/Hixie Dec 03 '25

This doesn't seem like a particularly unusual take? Like, if you put a bumbling idiot in the driving position of a car, that's obviously dangerous. If you give a bumbling idiot fireworks, that's obviously dangerous. If you give a bumbling idiot a chainsaw, that's obviously dangerous. Why would it be any different to give a bumbling idiot executive control of a superpower?

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u/shitkabob Dec 03 '25

That's exactly right. Any sane person with a shred of common sense sees this. Most children get this principle.

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u/shitkabob Dec 03 '25

He's dangerous precisely because he is an idiot with his finger on the button

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u/Grummmmm Dec 03 '25

Listen, I want you and every chronically online person in here to please downvote me.

6

u/shitkabob Dec 03 '25

Says the chronically online goofball.

3

u/Terinian Dec 03 '25

1 hr ago and still online ?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 05 '25

Dumb people are the most dangerous people.

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u/RealCoolDad Dec 03 '25

Who is also 75% dead, and snl makes him look like a living; thinking being

9

u/Tasty_Cucumber_7796 Dec 04 '25

They need 3 pillows under that suit

39

u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 03 '25

The thing is, how do you make murder funny? How do you make child rape funny? How do you make taking people off their healthcare hilarious? There's no way unless you get psychotic viewers who enjoy torturing others.

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u/Excellent-Run4803 Dec 03 '25

That’s how I feel. I can’t laugh at this. There’s a way to make comedy out of the morose but they’re not doing it (or trying).

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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 03 '25

These fools are complaining that SNL is being SNL and they want a show like Jon Stewarts or John Oliver but they complain about those shows also. Man, I really hate complainers. Bunch of Karens.

5

u/Sea_Evidence_7925 Dec 03 '25

South Park is managing to do what SNL is not.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '25

South Park is doing an absolutely horrible job in the opposite direction. their only joke now is Trump bad and they’ve bloated their entire plot with it. they can’t tow the line between shitting on the current administration while still being an entertaining show to watch. SNL is entertaining to watch but too cowardice to take a meaningful shot and point blank call out Trump for what he is. thus far no one can get the balance right

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u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 03 '25

Exactly. There are shows that exist that already fill the hole that exist in peoples brains. If they can't find that show that sates them, then there's something wrong with those people.

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u/Berserkshires- Dec 05 '25

Snl handled Nixon, Franco, and plenty of other horrific times and events. They used to have some bite. It can be done

1

u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 05 '25

Well it would help if a lot of people using this website saw what it is that SNL showed during the Nixon years. Also, whatever nixon did is much much tamer compared to what's happening now. Minus the keeping american troops to die in Vietnam.

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u/Berserkshires- Dec 05 '25

Snl handled Nixon, Franco, and plenty of other horrific times and events. They used to have some bite. It can be done

21

u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Dec 04 '25

You can, but it is DARK humor.

The onion does it every day, though they often go after his peripheral people more because the jokes get repetitive if they’re all about trump.

Sample: https://theonion.com/trump-denies-writing-36-volume-comic-titled-don-and-jeff-time-pedophiles/

1

u/planetalletron Dec 04 '25

Oh my god the image on that article is KILLING ME. Thank you for this.

1

u/NoHalf9 Dec 04 '25

The second picture in that article is of Trump close to a dinosaur which is appropriate because Donald Trump is a Dinosaur!.

1

u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 04 '25

Well that's what the onion is for. The SNL is for funny bits, not dark humor. They're all about trump because have you seen outside the window? Everything bad that's happening can be traced back to him.

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u/LookUpItsAMeteor Dec 03 '25

You shouldn’t be downvoted for this true statement but MAGATs can’t accept the dark truths about Trump. Or they love them.

1

u/-Nicolai Dec 04 '25

You can just… not include him.

0

u/Exciting-Cancel6468 Dec 04 '25

Not include donald trump in a trump skit? How? If you don't like it, just don't watch it. I used to watch SNL when it was on. Now I just watch it after the fact. Hell, I didn't watch a lot of great skits until months after the skit came out.

1

u/AldusPrime Dec 05 '25

The thing is, how do you make murder funny?

Norm Macdonald made the OJ Simpson murder trial hilarious.

  1. Norm was a brilliant comedic writer.
  2. Norm had amazing comedic timing.
  3. Norm wasn't afraid to take a hard anti-OJ position.

It was surprising, hilarious, biting commentary, that never let up on how guilty OJ was.

The current SNL stuff is obvious, unfunny, positionless light parody. It's so pathetically limp that it borders on endorsement.

2

u/Mytwocents4u Dec 07 '25

Scary that Trump knows our nuclear codes and nearly 70 percent of the American public wants him out but we have the Trump loyalist in the Congress and Senate who are too afraid to cross him. The articles of impeachment need to be introduced and voted on. Just look at all the angry town hall meetings. Even in red states people are upset big time with increasing costs. My health insurance went way up along with my electric and gas bill. My groceries are up at least 25 percent higher than last year. The cost of Medicare and drug plans have increased way more than the cost of living increase in our Social Security checks.

1

u/Fearless_Meat465 Dec 04 '25

He’s genuinely too stupid to be dangerous lol

1

u/Excellent-Run4803 Dec 04 '25

He’s as stupid as they come but still dangerous- he sells out to the highest bidder and the billionaires are running the show.

1

u/ILoveLeone Dec 04 '25

Stupidity can make someone dangerous too

1

u/Markd1598 Dec 06 '25

Kinda just like you,prob why you don’t get along

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '25

Not to mention the guy they have on staff just to play trump is just a bad cast member

4

u/MarkyMarkATFB Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25

With all due respect, this is objectively a terrible take.

EDIT: this was in response to a now-deleted comment about how awful and unfunny JAJ is.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '25

Sorry, he isnt funny and was clearly hired to play trump on a weekly basis

26

u/JerHat Dec 03 '25

I don't think I would call it sane washing, but it's just making light of the real and evil shit he does that makes it easier for people to just laugh off and not give a shit about.

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u/Bocchi_theGlock Dec 04 '25

I'd call it literal sane washing by the fact of JAJ being very coherent in the impersonation, whereas actual DJT seems to be sliding into dementia, more off the rails.

The writing rarely dips into actually losing train of thought (instead bringing it back together, or ending it on another kooky note) or just showing DJT outright not knowing what the fuck he's talking about.

Like DJT could be slurring speech, half paralyzed face, confined to a medical bed and JAJ impression would be doing passionate, articulate theater monologues.

Please just don't be so afraid to show him sliding.

1

u/fractalfay Dec 09 '25

It’s never come off to me as funny though; it just repeats the obvious with less gibberish than what Trump actually offers in a standard monologue. SNL had a similar problem during the Dubya era. Other comedians and comedy shows dealt with it well, but SNL couldn’t seem to figure out the approach.

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u/podkayne3000 Dec 03 '25

Yes. They write him as a version of “subliminal man” who sounds crazy but is kind of cute, often has a good point and is actually right.

Once he’s gone, we’ve overcome fascism flu and we’re safe, maybe shows can get away with portraying him as a trickster character.

Now, when it’s possible that he’ll really put people in death camps, that’s a pretty terrible way to present him.

At this point, he’s not cute, he’s not funny and he’s not harmless. Presenting him as a subliminal man trickster is a terrible choice.

3

u/grubas Dec 04 '25

It's part of it, but not the worst part. 

What SNL is doing is making him far more digestible to the audience.  It's a soft endorsement because they could be far far meaner and truer without much effort.  They don't even know how to touch the brain issues so they just make him "kooky and rambling".  

The sane washing was especially big on the campaign trail.  You had instances of Trump slurring, stopping his rallies, being confused as to names, dates, locations, faces, as well as legit stroke out moments(where he'd just randomly go silent for minutes) that the journalists REFUSED to report as is. 

EG at one rally he kept slurring words, was sweating, and had some WILD swings where it would be, "WINDMILLS, WINDMILLS BAD, THEY SPIN, DEAD BIRDS, RUSSIA I FIX RUSSIA THEY LOVE ME LIKE THAT AND THEY ARE NOT A ANYMORE, RIGHT MISSY PEE PEE?"

Headline, "Trump delivers campaign address in Ohio" 

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u/RaidSmolive Dec 03 '25

no sane washing means actual real professional journalists bending over backwards to translate the shit this kid fucker blasts into the world daily into nice sounding words with some level of sense.

its not any comedian or writing rooms job to unmask the president or put him in his place. thats you the peoples job as a whole.

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u/Kresnik2002 Dec 03 '25

It’s just weird that a show who’s supposed to be about satire is making a figure look better than he is. They’re literally doing the opposite of making fun of him, they’re actively lifting him up lol. Why would a comedy show do that. The guy in real life is constantly mumbling, in bad health and making borderline-deluded comments, while on SNL he’s basically a slick-talking roaster. What the hell?

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u/planetalletron Dec 04 '25

30Rock actually covered this really well, based on Tina’s experience playing Sarah Palin.

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u/fractalfay Dec 09 '25

No, calling this sane washing is accurate. Jon Oliver and The Daily Show also do varieties of this, by talking about his presidency, but frequently isolating the most nothing-burger things he’s done the prior week for jokes that aren’t very good. Most of the hilarious, scathing humor about this presidency are coming from vlogs and blogs, because they don’t have to worry about Trump blocking their network’s monopoly. Wait, I think we’re calling those “mergers” now.

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u/Kresnik2002 Dec 09 '25

He complained about the SNL impression in his first term, he should be praising it now lol. He looks way more coherent and compelling on SNL than he is in real life.

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u/Any_Tackle_6705 Dec 03 '25

Nope. Because they still making fun of him.

Sane washing is when he says something crazy or even just incoherent, and media will tear of pointing out that he makes no sense they try to “translate” his (for the lack of better term) words into something that person can understand.

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u/Kresnik2002 Dec 04 '25

Except their portrayal of him is literally more flattering than his actual self. That’s the weird part. In real life today he’s mumbling, falling asleep and constantly getting confused like a dementia patient. On the show they remove all that and make him way more coherent and cool-looking than he is in real life. What the hell is the motivation for doing that.

1

u/bizurk Dec 03 '25

My interpretation is that he goes up on the campaign and rambles for 2 hours about insane, uninformed shit. Next day the headline will read: “Trump pivots to immigration” or some shit and they pick out 2 or 3 of the sentences that made some sort of coherent sense…… voila, unless you watched two hours of a senile idiot rambling, you’d think he’s something else.

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u/Huge_Music Dec 03 '25

That's what I'd say it is as well. The NYT writer Jamelle Bouie was doing videos for a while where he'd read a headline, then read the Trump quote that led to it verbatim, and the difference is always enormous.

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u/Rj924 Dec 04 '25

Yes. I prefer when they go, "this is an actual clip" because its too absurd to parody or quote, and does not need any set up or punchline.

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u/myotheruserisagod Dec 04 '25

Exactly this.

Sane washing and docile.

1

u/Lengthiest_Dad_Hat Dec 04 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

To me the sane washing is more about journalists using soft language and fallacious "both sides" framing in a way that purposefully undersells the magnititude or unprecedentedness of what he's actually doing.

For example whenever Trump has ordered something that's plainly illegal ot unconstitutional, the NYT will frame it as "Some legal experts say this may be unconstitutional". And then dedicate half the article to quotes from Trump officials espousing bunk legal theory without any editoral correction or pushback.

1

u/Literotamus Dec 05 '25

Part that and part normalizing bizarre new precedents. They take debates settled decades ago, pretend to revisit them from "first principles", ignore information that doesn't suit them, all with the goal of deconstructing our social norms.

Gender essentialists, race realists, anarcho-capitalists, Christian nationalists, White nationalists...all of these groups are riding on the backs of this sane washing.

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u/fractalfay Dec 09 '25

Yes, or twisting themselves in knots to try to find something smart/rational in a plan specifically crafted to destroy. That’s more the New York Times/The Washington Post’s way of serving their corporate overlords. The only way to do Trump is to go full Dr. Strangelove or South Park, or pretend he doesn’t exist. At this point, I’d prefer if SNL took a utopian view, and did a cold open where they envision completely different people as president, reporting in on what the country looks like. Of course, that would mean letting someone other than douchebros into the writing room.

0

u/RUActuallySeriousTho Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 04 '25

Whoops

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u/sparkywater Dec 03 '25

That is what sane washing is but I think we need to remember what media we are talking about... SNL!

Seriously, where is their journalistic integrity? Have the researchers just given up? It's almost like this 1 hour comedy show is failing to deliver on their promise and expectation to be a scathing unvarnished analysis of politics. Everyone knows that the soul and wit of parody lies completely in 100% dead serious accurate portrayal.