“Saturday Night Live” (SNL) spoofed former President Donald Trump’s sneaker release in a movie trailer sketch.
SNL guest host Shane Gillis, a comedian and actor, received an imitation of Trump’s now-famous gold high tops in the “White Men Can Trump” trailer, which gave him the power to convince people with whatever he said, such as claiming he was making baskets despite missing the net.
“Those Trump shoes made you good at basketball?” one character asked the sketch’s protagonist.
“No, they gave me the power to say I’m good at basketball, then double down on that until people actually start to believe it,” Gillis replied.
The sketch’s narrator said Gordon Dwyer, Gillis’s character, discovered that “winning is a state of mind” as soon as he put on the Trump shoes. The former president launched the shoes at Philadelphia’s “Sneaker Con” Feb. 17, initially priced online at $399 before selling out.
The “magical sneaker movie for white people” then features Gillis’s character making a Trump-like transformation, adopting the GOP presidential frontrunner’s iconic blonde hairstyle and blunt mannerisms. (RELATED: ‘Oh My God, It’s Her’: Nikki Haley Guest Stars On ‘SNL’)
Scenes from the trailer showed Gillis, resembling Trump, stepping on a scale which read 254.6 pounds, revising the figure to 170.0 pounds because the Dwyer character “is whatever he says he is.” The faux film trailer, produced by the spoof “Newsmax Studios” and writer of “Like Mike,” also showed a Trump-like Gillis in bed with a woman, played by SNL cast member Sarah Sherman, after a session of “fantastic lovemaking,” during which, she was convinced by Dwyer, she had “a big O.”
Gillis last appeared on SNL in 2019 before his brief tenure on the comedy show was cut short due to controversy surrounding his use of insensitive language, according to The Hollywood Reporter. SNL cut ties with Gillis after video emerged of the comedian uttering racial slurs on “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast” in 2018.