No. of Recommendations: 6
The SNL press briefing began with Ashley Padilla, playing the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told a gaggle of reporters that she was excited to “answer your friendly questions.”
“As you all know,” Padilla said, “there was no news this week. Nothing happening with the president. No weird information was revealed. No one had any accusations that rhymed with ‘edophile.’”
The first question from Chloe Fineman (playing the CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins) asked about the release of some 20,000 of Epstein’s emails and why President Trump’s name appeared in so many of them.
“You know you suck, right?” Padilla replied. She added, “The only thing these emails prove is that President Trump did nothing wrong. If anything, his crime was loving too much. And possibly too young.”
Padilla parried more questions from reporters until Kenan Thompson asked, “What does Trump have to hide?”
It was here that [Johnson as Trump] took over the briefing himself: “I can answer that,” he said. “I am hiding almost nothing. Just enough to make it extremely suspicious. But let me ask you a question: If there was something incriminating about me in the files, why would I cover them up?”
A baffled Thompson asked, “Isn’t that exactly why you would cover them up?”
Johnson said, “If I was innocent, wouldn’t I just release all the files?
Thompson responded in disbelief, “Again, I think you’re agreeing with what everyone is saying.”
Johnson said of Epstein, “I barely knew the guy, OK, as evidenced by the thousands of pictures of us together, dancing and grinding our teeth at various parties. Always leering and pointing at something just off camera. Probably a book we’re excited to read.”
He said he believed Megyn Kelly had made an important point this week: “She said Epstein’s not a pedophile. Terrific thing to just say out of nowhere. Great job, Megyn.”
After promising to release each of the Epstein files “for the low, low price of $800,” Johnson added news of a further development.
“I pardoned a turkey who by complete coincidence is a convicted sex criminal,” he said. “So we’re going to be looking into that very shortly, I can assure you that.”
