If there was any doubt as to who Saturday Night Live’s top dog is, Kate McKinnon put that to rest with an episode that solidified her place on the show’s Mount Rushmore. And while everyone’s talking about her towering performance in the moving cold open (and rightfully so), let’s not ignore McKinnon’s brilliant interpretation of Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg, which she resurrected for a much needed visit to "Weekend Update."
The last time we saw McKinnon as Ginsberg, she was hitting then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with searing “Gins-burns” at SNL’s Republican National Convention desk. “Trump picked a fight with the wrong 15 lb, 200-year-old marionette, baby!” she said at the time. “Chris Christie on the Supreme Court? I’d rather have an empty chair than a broken one!”
So how would she react now that the unthinkable has happened? Well for one, she’s not going anywhere. “The bench is now my porch,” she told host Colin Jost. “I’m going to sit on it all day and scream, ‘No! Get out of my yard!'” That’s good news for Democrats who see the 83-year-old Ginsberg as a beacon of light in a Supreme Court who has the potential to turn hostile under a Trump presidency.
When asked by Jost how long she thinks she can hold on to her seat, McKinnon’s Ginsberg made it perfectly clear that they’re going to have to pry her out of that chair. “I’m eating an apple a day to keep Ben Carson away.”
Of course, Jost and co-host Michael Che continued to take shots at the new President-elect throughout the segment, but none more poignant than this jab by Jost, which encapsulated the absurdity of a Trump Presidency. “If you’re 70 and have no experience, you couldn’t get hired at target.” So yeah, four years of Trump is a daunting prospect. But four more years of SNL blasting Trump, well, that we can live with.
