SNL’s Oval Office Cold Open Goes Viral: Watch the Sketch Everyone’s Talking About

Saturday Night Live kicked off its November 8 episode with a blistering Oval Office cold open that instantly lit up social feeds and morning-after water-cooler chats. In the sketch, James Austin Johnson’s pitch-perfect Donald Trump hosted an impromptu “press conference,” only for a pharmaceutical lobbyist to faint beside him—an exaggerated replay of last week’s real-world incident that saw a White House guest collapse during a photo-op. Rather than express concern, Johnson’s Trump barreled ahead with rambling boasts about poll numbers, rising grocery prices being “fake news,” and the “totally beautiful” government shutdown, delivering the kind of chaotic monologue fans now expect from the show’s Trump 2.0 era. The room filled out with familiar SNL faces: Heidi Gardner as press-secretary-for-a-day Elise Stefanik, Mikey Day as a jittery Secret Service agent trying to drag the unconscious lobbyist away, and newcomer Chloe Troast playing a TikTok journalist live-streaming the spectacle. The bit escalated when Kenan Thompson’s Senate Majority Leader John Fetterman FaceTimed in wearing a hoodie and demanding, “Yo, Mr. President, can we wrap this up? I’ve got the Eagles game on mute.” From there, Bowen Yang entered as Judge Arthur Engoron serving yet another subpoena, which Trump immediately signed—“autograph style”—then tried to pawn on eBay for “ten million Bitcoin.” Reaction online was swift: the official @nbcsnl clip accrued more than 1.2 million views in its first 12 hours, with #SNL and #OvalOffice trending atop X (formerly Twitter). Political commentators applauded the show for lampooning voter frustration after Democrats’ surprise off-year wins, which the sketch folded into a dig at Trump’s “landslide in the polls—if you only count the people in Mar-a-Lago.” Entertainment outlets called it one of Season 51’s sharpest openings, noting how the collapse gag let writers blend slapstick with pointed commentary on the administration’s crisis management style. For viewers who missed the live broadcast, the episode is now streaming on Peacock, while individual sketches— including the Oval Office cold open—are available on YouTube and the NBC app. With election-year storylines heating up and Johnson’s Trump firmly established as a fan favorite, expect more Oval Office chaos when SNL returns after Thanksgiving break.