The “Saturday Night Live” cold open skewered Ted Cruz’s humiliating about-face to Tucker Carlson after calling Jan. 6 rioters “terrorists” — with Aidy Bryant’s Cruz begging Donald Trump: “Hit me, choke me, spit in my face. I just want to stay in the mix.”
“Donald, if you’re watching, I love you, baby,” Bryant said. “You are the king. Honestly, hit me.”
“Cruz” explained to Kate McKinnon’s Laura Ingraham that the rioters were decidedly not terrorists, after all, but “big burly men with big-D energy. I like ’em a lot. They’re my cool friends.”
“Ingraham” took the opportunity to trash Joe Biden’s first year in office.
“Can we all admit it’s a disaster?” she asked her viewers. “Inflation’s out of control, gas is at $19 a gallon and the green M&M has been canceled just for being a whore!”
She also took a second to pitch her few remaining sponsors, like “COVID Negs.” It’s the “COVID test that’s guaranteed to be negative, even if you have it,” she explained. “COVID Negs: I’m going to your wedding.”
Then she introduced the “svelte, muscular, 230-pound gorilla in the room,” James Austin Johnson’s Trump.
“I’m back, just like ‘Tiger King 2,’” he said. “You had fun the first time, and now you’re like: ‘How are more people from this not in jail yet?’”
Then he was off on “Wordle.”
Check it out in the clip above.
