Lin-Manuel Miranda returned to his role as Alexander Hamilton for the Saturday Night Live cold open, as he and other founding fathers have their new democracy celebration stopped and frozen in time by a gloating Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) marking his return to office.
Miranda and the other founding fathers go into the lyrics, In America, all men are created equal. America, not England, we do in the sequel. We will have leaders, but no one thing. In America, we will never have a king.
Then Trump entered. “Never say never,” he said. “Kidding, though in many ways I am not. I’m in my king era. But just like the founding fathers, I am creating a new country as well, and just like them, we’re doing it very whitely.”
The skit featured Johnson’s Trump going on about his inauguration week, reveling in the attention, his blitz of executive orders and his list of cabinet nominees, while Miranda’s Hamilton and the other founding fathers are frozen in time by the new president in their presence.
Miranda actually struggled not to break character at one point, as Johnson’s Trump said to him, “He’s in sniffing distance of an EGOT and he’s got to stand there til I’m done.”
More to come.
