For the first time in 2022, James Austin Johnson busted out his celebrated Trump impersonation, which helped make him a name online and eventually land him his SNL gig. It’s a very different take on the former president than the one Alec Baldwin busted out for years, nailing his stream-of-consciousness rants and gravelly voice. And when he brought it back for the new year, he made sure to do it while tipping a hat to the word game that’s taken the world by storm.
That would be Wordle, the daily online contest in which users try — and hopefully not fail — to guess the day’s five-letter word. In SNL’s cold open for their Will Forte-hosted episode, Johnson’s Trump appears on The Ingraham Angle, hosted by Fox News’ Jan. 6 texter Laura Ingraham (Kate McKinnon). And he uses Wordle as a guide as he runs through one of his serpentine monologues. He starts talking about boosters, somehow connects that to John Mayer and Jason Momoa and then magically brings it back to his favorite subject: himself.
The sketch also features Aidy Bryant’s Ted Cruz, who advises his Texan constituents to book their tickets for their February Cancún trips no; Pete Davidon as Novak Djokovic, the unvaxxed Serbian tennis player who was booted from Australia (McKinnon’s Ingraham: “I never thought I’d use ‘deported’ in a bad way”); Ego Nwodim’s Candace Owens. “To quote the only words that Martin Luther King Jr. ever said: ‘I have a dream.’ That’s it. End of quote,” she said. “It’s my greatest honor to fight for African Americans, no matter how many times they ask me to stop.”
You can watch the sketch in the video above.