SNL's Trump totally, definitely knows Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory


NBC's Saturday Night Live returned for its 43rd season Saturday with an episode hosted by Ryan Gosling and featuring Jay Z as the musical guest. Alec Baldwin reprised his role as President Trump.
The show kicked off with Trump as "The Chaos President" attempting to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. On the phone with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, SNL's Trump unconvincingly insists he's aware Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. He offers such sage advice as, "Ma'am, I don't know if you know this but you're in an island in the water, the ocean water, big ocean, with fishies and bubbles and turtles that bite" — just a slight twist on the real Trump's comments this past week.
Baldwin as Trump also weighed in on the president's attacks on NFL players protesting police brutality ("I actually love football ... People say I remind them of a football player because I'm combative, I like to win, and I might have a degenerative brain disease"), and he met with Kate McKinnon's Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who lives in a grandfather clock outside the Oval Office.
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Gosling opened with a jazzy monologue performance, and Jay Z saluted NFL protesters of police brutality by wearing a Colin Kaepernick jersey. Watch the cold open sketch below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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