On Wednesday, February 27th, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, provide an open-doors testimony to Congress. The whole ordeal seemed to be fighting fire against fire. During the testimony, Cohen provided physical evidence to support his accusations against Trump. For example, his claims that Trump directed and had complete knowledge of the payoffs to two women to keep quiet about their affairs with Trump during the campaign. This presentation of evidence was challenged with fury-filled responses from Ohio representative, Jim Jordan. This whole package of comebacks, accusations, and political drama was a gift for the writers of Saturday Night Live, who took the event and made it their own.

The ‘Michael Cohen hearing Cold Open” premiered on Saturday, March 2nd and featured Ben Stiller as Cohen, which delighted the public. Jim Jordan was played by Bill Hader, a surprise SNL guest. At 3:45, confrontation is underway. The SNL version of Chairman Cummings recognizes Representative Jordan and the first words out of his mouth are directed to Stiller, saying, “Good afternoon to you, you lying piece of human trash!” He goes to exclaim that, yes, he is very angry at the formal attorney. So much so that he couldn’t even wear a suit jacket to the hearing. The laugh tracks roars and for the next five minutes, Stiller’s character and the SNL Congress goes back and forth, trading verbal jabs and damning evidence. The whole video comes to an end with Stiller’s dramatic apology and “Live from New York,,, It’s Saturday Night!”

Currently, this video has almost seven million views on Youtube. However, even with the light-hearted stance of comedy at the center, this video has spurred up some conflict. For example, some believe this video comes off very disrespectful to the members of Congress depicted. For Hader’s character, Representative Jordan, many feel as if they made him seem as a rage-fueled person, whose only intent is to discredit and insult Cohen as much as possible. On the other hand, there is another depiction that really stirred up more backlash: the scene of Mark Meadows and his ‘presenation of evidence,’ Trump staffer Lynne Patton. More towards the end of the skit, Meadows, played by Alex Moffat, brings out longtime Trump staffer, Lynne Patton, explaining with a smug look, “I couldn’t help but hear you call President Trump a racist. Well, lucky for me, I brought a black woman!” Later on, Moffat’s character thinks Patton is Omarosa, a White House worker who was fired last year. This little bit of the sketch fueled some opinions, most being on the fact that they’re disrespecting Patton by referring to her in the skit as the ‘black woman,’ and never really saying her real name. Now, even with all these bad aspects of the skit, many people really see the positive side of it.

In this new world of stressful politics, it’s hard to find some side of the news that actually makes you smile. It’s nice for, once in a while, to take a break from the bustle of the newsfeed to a comedic interpretation of the same things. To the majority of Americans, laughter is the best medicine and something that is needed to distract yourself from the craziness in D.C. With Cold Opens like these, you can take a moment out of your day to laugh about the news, rather than letting it become another thing to be down about.