Saturday Night Live (SNL) has mocked US President Donald Trump after his two aides, White House adviser Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed during a cabinet meeting last week. The Republican leader told the Cabinet heads that they, not Mr Musk, have the final say on staffing and policy at their agencies.
According to a Reuters report, Mr Musk, assigned by President Trump to eliminate large parts of the federal bureaucracy, accused Mr Rubio of having fired “nobody” and resisting Mr Musk’s push for large staff reductions. However, Mr Rubio pushed back, saying 1,500 State Department employees had taken early retirement buyouts already.
Playing on the power struggle between the three, the SNL sketch showed Mr Trump acting as a peace broker.
“I can’t have you two at each other’s throats. After all, I have a perfect record. Everyone who has ever worked for me has left on good terms and gone on to write a book called ‘The Man Who Ruined Everything’. So you two need to start acting like mature adults,” said Mr Trump’s character, played by James Austin Johnson.
Mr Rubio’s character blasted Mr Musk’s total access to the government, pointing out that the president had fired air traffic controllers, based on his advice.
“What I don’t accept is Elon having total access to our government. Planes are crashing, and he keeps trying to fire air traffic controllers.”
Johnson’s character moved to defend Musk. “Elon knows a lot about air travel. He runs SpaceX, which is doing incredible things in terms of explosions and with regard to rocket debris,” the Trump character continued, referring to SpaceX’s recent failed launch.
“Elon has been doing a good job with DOGE and he gave me some great stuff to talk about at State of the Union.”
Trump tries to broker a truce between Musk and Rubio pic.twitter.com/k7DnHjXIei
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 9, 2025
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Previous instance
This is not the first instance when Mr Trump has been mocked by SNL. Last year, he was slammed for his Cabinet pick as well as the highly-animated meeting with former president Joe Biden at the Oval Office.
While Mr Johnson played the Republican leader’s part, Dana Carvey — a regular SNL cast member, portrayed Mr Biden with Alex Baldwin also making a cameo appearance as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the new health czar.