Kenan Thompson Perfectly Skewers Project 2025 at DNC

Saturday Night Live actor Kenan Thompson had a whole new take on Project 2025 at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday: make it ridiculous.

Appearing on stage with a gigantic copy of the 920-page Christian Nationalist manifesto, the sketch comedian spoke with several Americans over video call, highlighting how the conservative agenda’s proposals would immediately and negatively impact peoples’ quality of life.

“You ever see a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Well here it is,” Thompson quipped.

“You know how, when you download an app and there are hundreds of pages there that you don’t read, it’s just the terms and conditions and you just click agree?” he continued. “Well, these are the terms and conditions of a second Trump presidency. You vote for him, you vote for all of this.”

“Let’s take a look,” he said.

After seamlessly improv-ing through a sound issue during an interview with, ironically, an A/V technician, Thompson spoke with a married gay woman, an OB/GYN, and a Department of Education civil servant who doubled as a union president. Flipping through pages of the giant book, Thompson cited exact sections of Project 2025 that would uproot not just their personal liberties, but also their livelihoods.

The sketch threw the stadium into laughter, but Thompson wound down the bit with a dose of reality.

“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real, and it’s in this book,” he said, directing people to check out the full text of the document at Harris’s website.

Watch the full bit below.

Donald Trump still can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that Democrats have chosen Vice President Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee.

“I watched Joe Biden Monday night, and was amazed at his ANGER at being humiliated by the Democrats,” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to the president’s appearance on the first night of the Democratic National Convention. “I was happy to have played a part in his demise in that it all began on the evening of June 27, 2024, THE DEBATE, which I think was heavily pushed and promoted by Comrade Kamala Harris.”

Trump claiming that Biden’s ousting after his abysmal performance in his first presidential debate against Trump was the “first ever COUP of the President of the United States,” which sounds a little like sour grapes given the failure of Trump’s own attempted coup on January 6.

“The good news is that I believe Joe Biden, the Worst President in the History of the United States, who served with the Worst Vice President in the History of the United States, is now seething,” Trump added. “I don’t know why he gave up, I don’t know why he quit. He got 14 Million Votes, she got NONE. He’s an angry man now, and he should be!”

But Biden didn’t appear angry as he delivered his address on Monday. Instead, he quipped that he started his 50-year tenure serving the country by being “too young to be in the Senate” and ending it “too old to stay as president.” In an emotional farewell, Biden shared that he had “made a lot of mistakes” in his career but “gave [his] best” to the country.

Rather, it’s Trump who has been an angry, seething man since Biden’s withdrawal from the race. For days after Biden’s announcement, Trump kept attacking him as though Biden were still his opponent. It’s only gotten worse for Trump since then, as Harris and running mate Tim Walz continue to get under his skin. In a news conference last week, Trump admitted as much, saying of Harris, “I’m very angry at her.”

Donald Trump keeps making the same weird claim to his supporters that he doesn’t need more votes. On Wednesday, he repeated the idea at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, telling his supporters that “our primary focus is not to get out the vote.”

Trump emphasized that his goal was “to make sure they don’t cheat,” adding that Democrats “are going to cheat like hell to win the election because they have no bounds, they have no bounds.”

Trump has been using this odd message for weeks, saying on Fox and Friends last month that his instructions to his supporters are: “We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes.” Less than a week later, he told a group of supporters, “You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” He then doubled down on those claims to Fox’s Laura Ingraham after she pressed him for clarification. Even going back to October, he said something similar at a New Hampshire rally.

It seems that the former president and convicted felon wants to cast doubt on the coming election, especially if results don’t appear to be going his way. Considering that he lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, that is a strong possibility. Trump may be thinking of riling up his supporters early and then turning them loose like he did at the Capitol in 2021.

Or, as he said in North Carolina, he’s been so fooled by all of the Trump signs he’s seeing that he really thinks he has the votes locked up. That could be another sign of cognitive decline.

Donald Trump complained about his own campaign asking him to please stay on topic, during a meandering speech on Wednesday that was meant to be about national security.

Trump went off on a wild tangent whining about his campaign’s new strategy during a campaign stop in Asheville, North Carolina. He strayed off topic to lament about Barack Obama’s address Tuesday night, which included a jab at Trump that’s likely to stick with him: a comment on Trump’s so-called “crowd size.”

“Did you see Barack Hussein Obama last night, take loose shots, he was taking shots at your president,” Trump cried on stage Wednesday.

“You know they always say ‘Sir, please stick to pah-licy, don’t get personal,’” Trump said mockingly.  “And yet, they’re getting personal all night long, these people! Do I still have to stick to pah-licy?”

The crowd cheered “No!” in reply.

But it’s not Trump’s devoted fans who are asking him to cut down on the personal attacks and stay on message—it’s everybody else.

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign launched a new tactic to get Trump to curb his tendency to give speeches littered with off-script asides, which are more personal attacks against his opponents than actual policy ideas, by having him appear at smaller “messaging events” focused on one specific topic.

It’s not just Trump’s team that sees the problem. Republican lawmakers have also begun to sound the alarm that Trump’s scattered speeches and lame, ad hominem attacks could lose them votes in November as well.

So far, the Trump team’s new approach hasn’t been going all that well—a sleepier Trump, deprived of the energy of a larger audience, has been rotely delivering similar remarks at every speaking event. Tuesday’s press conference was meant to be about crime and safety, but Trump still managed to deliver most of the same talking points he did during his speech on economic issues the day before. No matter the size of the audience, or the stated topic, Trump manages to find a way to say everything that pops into his head.

For example, on Wednesday, Trump continued his imagined conversation with some aide warning him to stay on topic: “‘Sir, you must stick to policy. You’ll win it on the border, you’ll win it with inflation, you’ll win it with your great military that you built—that they gave away $85 billion dollars worth of it to Afghanistan. Sir, you’re going to win it on crime. The crime is running through the streets like never before. You’re going to win it on all of these things ...’” Trump rambled on.

Later in the speech, Trump continued to air his frustration with his team again, noting that Obama had been “very nasty last night.”

“I try and be nice to people, but it’s a little tough when they get personal. ‘Please’ again, remember? ‘Please, sir don’t get personal, talk about policy,’” Trump said. “Let me ask you about that. We’re going to do a free poll. Here’s the two questions: Should I get personal, should I not get personal?”

“Should I get personal?” Trump asked, to a roaring cheer from the crowd. “Should I not get personal?” he asked, and the response was far more muted.

“I don’t know, my advisers,” Trump mused, “are fired.”

“No, [I] would rather keep it on policy,” he said, dismissing the response from the crowd. “But sometimes it’s hard when you’re attacked from all ends.”

Despite bragging loudly and proudly that he “calls people names” like a childhood bully, Donald Trump admitted that he is struggling to find a nickname for Kamala Harris.

“I really didn’t find one with her,” he said at a rally in Asheboro, North Carolina, even as he announced his newest nickname for his opponent: Comrade Kamala.

After trying out “Lyin’ Kamala,” “Crazy Kamala,” “Kamabla,” and “Kamala Krash,” Trump is desperate to make his new name for the vice president stick. He has spent the last week trying it out and continuing to try to paint Harris as a “radical left” candidate. 

“I think her name will be ‘comrade’ because I think that’s the most accurate name,” said Trump in his Wednesday speech. “You know all my names. They’ve all worked, they’ve all been very successful.”

Nicknames and personal attacks have been a large part of each one of Donald Trump’s campaigns with such hits as “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” and “Meatball Ron.” It seems like even Trump can acknowledge that “Comrade Kamala” might not be perfect but he hopes it will at least mentally paint a picture of a far-left candidate.

This past Sunday Trump even went so far as to post an A.I.-generated photo of so-called Communist Chairman Harris speaking at the Democratic National Convention to a militant proletariat with a hammer and sickle flag. But both this weird image and the nickname don’t make Harris seem less cool and don’t erase her more moderate policies on the border, crime, and fracking.