Saturday Night Live’s recent sketch centred on a fictional Trump Awards ceremony took a brutal jab at the President’s health.
Starring James Austin Johnson as the President, the sketch opens at the Trump’s Award Show held at the fictional Donald J. Trump Chinese Theatre, where every category is themed around the president.
As Trump enters the stage, he greets the crowd, calling them “awful” and “terrible,” before joking that he’d like to lead a round of applause for the nominees, but that his doctors warned clapping would cause his “dead purple hands” to “explode with blood.”
live from the first annual Trump awards pic.twitter.com/it355tO2nR
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) January 25, 2026
The comments about his hands stem from widespread discussion and speculation after people noticed bruising on the president’s hands on several occasions.
Addressing the discussion, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, published on January 1, 2026, the 79-year-old claimed that the bruising is caused by taking higher doses of aspirin.
“They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart. Does that make sense? They’d rather have me take the smaller one. I take the larger one, but I’ve done it for years, and what it does do is it causes bruising,” he told the newspaper.
Donald Trump with very visible bruising on his right hand today. pic.twitter.com/AmBUNdFJzz
— Spencer Hakimian (@SpencerHakimian) August 25, 2025
The President even admitted to wearing makeup, which is “easy to put on,” to cover the bruising. “I have makeup that’s, you know, easy to put on, takes about 10 seconds,” Trump added.
Most recently, bruising on the president’s left hand was visible as he addressed attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on the second day of the gathering.
Addressing the issues, the POTUS claimed that he “clipped” his hand on a table, which he said caused the bruising. “I’m very good. I clipped it on the table. So I put a little — what do they call it — cream on it. I clipped it,” he told reporters.
He continued, “I would say take aspirin if you like your heart, but don’t take aspirin if you don’t want to have a little bruising. I take the big aspirin. When you take the big aspirin, they tell you that you bruise. The doctors said, ‘You don’t have to take that, sir. You are very healthy.’ I said, ‘I’m not taking any chances.’ That’s one of the side effects.”
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the explanation in a statement, saying the US president had “hit his hand on the corner of the signing table, causing it to bruise” during a Board of Peace event earlier that day in Davos.
Meanwhile, in the aforementioned SNL sketch, Trump, played by Johnson, said that his hands are “probably nothing to worry about,” adding that his doctor told him that he “can live to be 120 or current age.”
He went on to announce the first award for “best picture of me,” which was presented to a photo of the fake president and described as “another fake award that he made FIFA invent to give to himself.”
During the acceptance speech, Johnson, as Trump, thanked himself and “the big man upstairs, which is what I call my brain tumour.”
“And if I can be serious for a moment, there’s so much horrible stuff going on in our country and the world right now. But I promise you, I’m just getting started,” he added.
