Saturday Night Live’s 10 best sketches from this season
By Matt Moore
7. Kanye West/Donald Trump cold open
In typical Saturday Night Live fashion, some of the show’s best work went in to the cold opens. It was during these segments that the show focused on politics for better or worse depending on your view. But when these sketches hit, they really hit.
One of the best examples came on Oct. 13, 2018. The episode already had some buzz around it because Seth Meyers was returning home to host for the first time. The show started with a bang by covering the story everyone knew it would: Kanye West’s visit with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
We may be at the point now where Alec Baldwin’s verison of Trump isn’t enough to carry a sketch. It can’t exist on its own without interacting with someone else impersonating another well-known figure. Luckily for Saturday Night Live, the president surrounds himself with people perfect for satirizing such as West.
Chris Redd does an excellent job as the rapper. He may not sound exactly like West in the same way former SNL cast member Jay Pharoah. But Redd’s Kanye West is different than what Pharoah did during his tenure. Redd is also helped out by the fact that the real interaction between West and Trump was so bizarre, he didn’t have to stretch too far for this sketch to land.