Mike Myers was back tonight as Elon Musk for another SNL cold open.
After the March 6 closed-door cabinet meeting blow up between Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, SNL had Donald Trump brokering a truce between Secretary of State “good little Marco” and the SpaceX owner over DOGE’s root canals on the U.S. government — with some White Lotus and Dr. Evil tossed in there.
“You’re the GOAT, you’re the scapegoat, but it is still a goat,” James Austin Johnson’s Trump told Marcello Hernández’s Rubio. “Who the hell does he think he is?” SNL’s POTUS asked himself of his 2016 GOP nomination rival. “Adrien Brody?”
SNL’s Rubio may think he’s the two-time Oscar winner, who gave a particularly long Oscar speech, but the show’s latest Elon proudly called himself “tech support,” as the real-life Musk does too.
Tossing the one-liners around, some directly from the real Trump, Musk and Rubio, the best part of tonight’s Oval Office cold open was all Myers — just like last week.
“Phase one of my plan is complete,” Myers’ Musk said in some internal (aka voiceover) dialogue. “Ingratiate yourself to the president and take over the media. But was taking this job a bad idea? A lot of people seem to really hate me. My Tesla stock is crashing, and my personal net worth just dropped by $100 billion.”
The Studio 8H crowd went crazy with the reference to the Austin Powers’ villain as Myers held his pinkie up to his closed mouth with Dr. Evil’s signature move.
And who is to say a fourth Austin Powers movie with Elon Musk as the long-lost offspring of Dr. Evil wouldn’t work — executive produced by Lorne Michaels, of course.
Tonight’s SNL comes off a week that saw the Anora dominating the Oscars, Trump’s excruciating long tirade before a joint session of Congress, and more public praise of Putin by POTUS. Since Shane Gillis hosted Saturday Night Live last week, there’s also been the freezing of U.S. military shipments and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. If that wasn’t enough, the past week’s seen stock-market plunges, tariff flip-flops involving Canada and Mexico, EU and UK defense proclamations, and a very warm Sin City welcome by Ari Emanuel’s pal and UFC boss Dana White to self-declared misogynist and woman beater Andrew Tate on the eve of International Women’s Day.
All of which is to say, three weeks after the almost political satire free SNL50: The Anniversary Special aired, the still early days of Trump 2.0 continues to provide SNL writers with an overload of material to choose from for cold opens and more. Plus, in a 50th season rich with cameos from superstar former cast members, the more Myers, the better.
Being that even with all his mistakes, exploding spacecraft and other forced errors, Musk doesn’t look to be leaving Trump’s side anytime soon, hopefully there’ll be more Myers on SNL this season.
With her Mayhem album just released on Friday, Lady Gaga is both host and musical guest on tonight’s 982nd episode of SNL. Having debuted on October 3, 2009, tonight is Joker 2 star Gaga’s fifth time as the musical guest on the NBC show. For triviaheads, it is also the second time the Grammy winner has been both musical guest and host.
