The final Saturday Night Live episode of 2018 opened with a parody of It's A Wonderful Life and more than a few satirical jabs at the Trump Presidency. The sketch also served as something of a curtain call for the season so far, bringing back celebrities who had cameos as key members of the Trump Administration in sketches from earlier in 2018.
Though It's A Wonderful Life was originally a box office bomb when it was first released in theaters in 1946, the movie would go on to become a holiday standard in the United States and one of the most popular Christmas movies of all time. The film's story centers upon George Bailey (James Stewart) - a good man pushed to suicide on Christmas Eve. As he contemplates jumping off a bridge, he is stopped by a man named Clarence (Henry Travers), who claims to be his guardian angel. Clarence goes on to show George Bailey the value of his life and his generous nature, by taking him to a world where he had never been born and showing him how much worse Bailey's hometown of Bedford Falls would be without him.
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The Saturday Night Live sketch turns this concept on its ear, with an angel named Clarence (Kenan Thompson) appearing to Donald Trump (Alec Baldwin) on the White House balcony. Trump is depressed by the mounting criminal investigations into his administration and is wishing that he had never become President of the United States. It's a wish Clarence is all too happy to grant, before taking Trump to see how the world has changed for the better without a Trump Presidency. The full sketch can be watched below.
The sketch brought back several celebrities who had cameos earlier in the season as key players in the ongoing investigation of Trump. Among these were Matt Damon as Justice Brett Kavanaugh (whom Damon played as a drunken fraternity dude-bro that never grew up) and Ben Stiller as Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. The sketch also features Robert De Niro as Robert Mueller - the chief investigator into the allegations leveled against the Trump campaign following the 2016 election.
Curiously, Mueller seems to recognize that Trump used to be president, as he shows him a picture of his grandson. He goes on to speak happily about how much time he has to spend with his family since he isn't investigating "some idiot for treason." When Trump says it seems like Mueller knows he used to be president, Mueller replies ominously, "Oh, I know everything. Everything."
Despite taking a number of jabs at Trump's policies as president, the Saturday Night Live sketch gets in a few digs at Hillary Clinton as well. When Trump asks why he didn't become president in this reality, Clarence replies that in this world Clinton made one stop in Wisconsin while on the campaign trail. The skit ends on an ironic note, with President Trump taking the lesson of It's A Wonderful Life to heart and wishing to have his old life back despite all his problems, as Clarence loudly protests that was not the message he was supposed to take from the vision.
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Source: Saturday Night Live