Former cast member Will Ferrell returned to host Saturday Night Live, and gave us a cold open featuring his signature impression of former president George W. Bush.
When Bush left office, we knew we’d miss Ferrell’s cutting impersonation of him, but we didn’t know that we’d miss Bush himself. As Ferrell-as-Bush pointed out, “Donnie Q. Trump came in, and suddenly, I’m looking pretty sweet by comparison. I’m suddenly popular AF.” But in case we forgot, he offered a helpful reminder that his presidency "was really bad. Like, historically not good.”
Seated in a replica Oval Office he had constructed in his basement, Ferrell took us on a tour of the historic lows of the Bush presidency, from the catastrophic stock market crash to the decades of senseless warfare—"Who has two thumbs and created ISIS?" And Ferrell points out that though he's looking pretty good in the glow of nostalgia, in some ways he and Trump aren't all that different. "I’m not a Trump synthesiser or anything," he says, "But we have a lot in common." There was one big difference though—"Back in my day, we didn’t let Russians rig our elections. We used the Supreme Court, like Americans.”
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
