Saturday Night Live keeps its finger on the pulse of pop culture, and the latest episode was no different. On Saturday (February 24), the long-running comedy sketch show took aim at Donald Trump‘s gold “Never Surrender” sneakers that he debuted at SneakerCon earlier this month.
A guy down on his luck, played by comedian Shane Gillis, is gifted a pair by the embattled politician/businessman right before a basketball game. While he still fails miserably at putting the ball in the net, once he puts the Trump shoes on, he’s transformed into a Trump clone and boldly claims, “I didn’t miss. It went in.” He later explained to his therapist, “The shoes gave me the power to say I’m good at basketball and then double down on that until people actually start to believe it.”
Donald Trump landed in Philly on February 17 for Sneaker Con, an annual gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.” The polarizing figure was greeted with loud boos and a few cheers as he entered the Philadelphia Convention Center to introduce what he called the “first official Trump footwear.”
The shoes are being sold for $399 on a new website that also sells Trump-branded “Victory47” cologne and perfume for $99 a bottle. The website, however, claims it has no connection to Trump’s campaign, though Trump campaign officials promoted the appearance in online posts. After learning of Trump’s special Sneaker Con appearance, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a statement through Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler. It read: “Donald Trump showing up to hawk bootleg Off-Whites is the closet he’ll get to any Air Force Ones ever again for the rest of his life.”
Conservatives, on the other hand, somehow think this will sway Black people to vote for Trump. As a Fox News contributor blindly said, “As you see Black support eroding from Joe Biden., this is [the shoes] connecting with Black America. Because they’re into sneakers. They love sneakers. This is a big deal. Certainly in the inner city.”
#FoxNews says #trump new sneakers connect to #BlackVoter because we love #sneakers 🤔🤨. I thought this was fake until I heard it! pic.twitter.com/vpgII3XKin
— BMB Empower Network (@BmbEmpower) February 22, 2024
Donald Trump continued to further offend the Black community with a series of comments he made during the South Carolina primary. He suggested his arrest and subsequent mugshot made him more appealing to the Black voter.
“I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,” Trump told the crowd. “And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing, but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.”
The National Association of the Advancement of Color People (NAACP) was furious. As former NAACP president Derrick Johnson explained to The Hill, “The NAACP is outraged, but not surprised by yet another racist remark from the former President. Donald Trump is delusional to think that his criminality would be an attractive quality to Black voters. He has taken advantage of an inherently racist system, while Black Americans have been abused by it. We are not the same.”
