SNL Premiere Roasts Trump and Hegseth in Midterm Cold Open

Saturday Night Live opened its new season on Oct. 3 with an SNL premiere aimed squarely at Washington. Host Dakota Johnson led the show, hardcore punk band Turnstile served as musical guest, and the cold open staged an audition room where anxious Republican operatives searched for a get-out-the-vote pitch that would not backfire. According to Rolling Stone, which covered the episode overnight, Donald Trump himself got the final audition in the sketch, while Pete Hegseth anchored one of the longest scenes of the night.

The timing was deliberate. Deadline reported that the show wrote the cold open against the backdrop of the volatile midterm elections, weeks away, with the president slumping in the polls. The sketch opened on a conference room of GOP consultants wondering, per the Rolling Stone review, whether anyone left on the bench could connect with voters without being a "liability." It then ran through the bench, one candidate at a time.

A cold open built around auditions

Marcello Hernandez played Senator Marco Rubio, brought in to reach Hispanic voters turned off by two years of the administration. He delivered the pitch in Spanish, insisting the president had fooled him too. Jeremy Culhane played Vice President JD Vance, who strode in confidently and was told by a consultant played by Andrew Dismukes to wait in the hall and send in the next person. Vance kept lobbying for a chance and finally delivered his message. It lasted four words before he was cut off, mocked as a "superstar," and sent off.

The sketch then turned to Senator Mitch McConnell, played by Mikey Day in a wheelchair. Per Deadline's recap, the 84-year-old Kentucky senator sat frozen before managing to hold up a peace sign, then responded hoarsely to his cue with a faltering "Live from New York, it's Sat—" before the audition moved on without him.

Colin Jost played Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, entering while chugging a non-alcoholic beer. His pitch urged supporters to do "the gayest thing ever and vote," per Rolling Stone. Hegseth then recapped a speech he had given to troops that week in the form of slam poetry, listing what he said had been removed from the military: "no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals." He boasted of putting "God" back in war, claimed soldiers were praying far more than they used to, and closed by telling overseas troops they could still vote by mail, calling that the only "bi male" he approved of.

Swift steals the monologue

The SNL premiere's other big moment came in Johnson's opening monologue, which Taylor Swift crashed. Johnson, appearing on the show after a split from Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and singer-songwriter Role Model, compared her new film Verity, described on the show as a psycho-sexual erotic thriller, to dating musicians. She joked that some do not wear shoes and some are terrible in bed, then noted she had walked away from concerts with a 2.5-year relationship while other people left with merchandise.

Johnson introduced Swift as her "literal therapist," and the pop star answered with a very different description of the friendship, according to Rolling Stone. Swift said she was no one's therapist: Johnson simply turned up at her house with an empty bottle of wine and asked whether Swift wanted some, then flopped on the couch and overshared while Swift responded with an occasional "Damn, that's crazy." Deadline separately reported that Swift joined Johnson on stage during the monologue and the two joked about dating musicians.

Musical guest Turnstile performed "Birds" plus a medley from the album Never Enough, Rolling Stone reported, capping a year in which live music keeps driving pop culture, from Glastonbury 2027 selling out in minutes to packed stadium runs. Weekend Update tackled a packed news week of its own: Deadline reported segments on the Cornell controversy and the return of Glee, while the Rolling Stone recap noted jokes about Trump's planned ballroom and Kristi Noem's divorce.

The New York Times review framed the night as the show offering last-minute campaign help to Trump and Hegseth. With the midterms weeks away, the SNL premiere suggests the show plans to keep the race itself at the center of the season's political comedy. Full coverage of the episode is available in Rolling Stone's review of the cold open< and more on the week's viral culture moments, like the tiny library class that blew up online.