'Saturday Night Live' returns Sept 26 with Knicks guard Jalen Brunson hosting. Will its cold open feature a Trump impression?
77% of users predicted NO — the community missed this one. 13 predictions cast.
"Saturday Night Live" opened its 52nd season on September 26, 2026, with New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson hosting. The cold open featured James Austin Johnson reprising his Donald Trump impression alongside Ramy Youssef as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In the sketch, Trump fixates on Mamdani, offering $20 billion for a Queens housing project to keep the mayor engaged with him, while Ashley Padilla played White House aide Natalie Harp as an obsessive rival vying for Trump's attention.
The sketch continued SNL's practice, established since 2016, of opening nearly every season with a political cold open built around the sitting president. That pattern held even with a non-political, sports-world host: producers kept Brunson's basketball material for the monologue and other segments while reserving the cold open for the Trump storyline.
The community had priced this outcome at just 23% likely, reflecting doubt that a lighthearted athlete-host premiere would follow the show's usual political format. It did, and the actual outcome landed opposite the community's lean.