Saturday Night Live opens its new season with political sketches targeting Trump and Mamdani.

“Saturday Night Live” opened its 52nd season with a cold open about President Donald Trump’s unusually warm relationship with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. James Austin Johnson’s Trump fawned over Mamdani, while Ashley Padilla’s debut as Trump aide Natalie Harp stole the scene with an intense, protective portrayal, including a threat to the mayor: “If you hurt him, I will end you.” The sketch also joked about Trump’s effort to bar reporters from several news outlets and ended with Mamdani proposing $21 billion for a Queens housing project in exchange for letting Trump stay in New York.
A Wall Street Journal report said Harp had urged Trump to exclude CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press pool—context behind the sketch’s press-access joke.
The cold open was set during a nor’easter, and Harp said she had run from Washington to New York “Weapons”-style, imitating a run from the horror movie.
Trump compared his unlikely bond with Mamdani to a tiger befriending a baby goat, and the sketch also joked that Mamdani might have grown up in one of Trump’s Queens apartment buildings—“Not with that last name,” Trump replied.
The Harp parody also appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier that week, where Kimmel introduced a clingy assistant character named Natalie, played by his wife.
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