Elbows Up
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have a new foe, and his name is...Mike Myers?
Being alive and cognizant of the world in 2025 is disconcerting and baffling and tragic in more ways than I can currently enumerate, but perhaps one fundamental shift that we are all struggling to take in is the collapse of much of what had once been our intense ideological differentiation. The only real political argument that matters right now is not left vs. right, or coconuts vs. MAGA hats.
It is accommodationists vs. fighters, people who want to stick their heads in the sand against people willing to stick their heads above the parapet and confront the menace head-on.
And so nothing, in the gloomy and head-spinning first few months of Trump 2.0, has given me quite so much unexpected joy—and stiffened my backbone— as the sight of Mike Myers wearing a Team Canada hockey jersey.
Of all the catastrophes that have unfolded with the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, many have been blearily predictable: the tormenting of immigrants, the attacks on LGBTQ people, the open embrace of Russian imperialism. But having the United States treat Canada, our northern neighbor and closest ally, as some kind of deranged ultra-left hellscape and future American colony, with the president demanding that an entire country of long standing become the 51st state, was one that I did not have on my personal bingo board for 2025.
Enter Mike Myers. It has been a minute since we’ve seen him, and he looks different now.
The eternally boyish comedian is approaching Social Security age. His hair is white, and his face might be a bit craggier since we saw him—or for most of us, didn’t see him—in 2008’s misguided The Love Guru, or even in the dismaying conclusion of the Austin Powers series, 2002’s Goldmember.
Myers returned to the orbit of Saturday Night Live recently to play our unelected billionaire-in-chief Elon Musk, and while I will have more to say about his performance momentarily, I wanted to start with what ended up being the most significant moment of his appearance on the show. As host Shane Gillis waved to the audience and made his farewells at the end of the episode, Myers stood next to him, unsmiling, holding his T-shirt up to reveal a picture of a maple leaf and a blunt message: “CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE.”
Myers raised his arm, pointed to his flexed elbow, and carefully mouthed the words “Elbows up.” The threat of Trump was a reminder for Myers that hockey games sometimes featured fights, and that it was time for Canadians to protect themselves by fighting back. The phrase would take on a life of its own amongst angry Canadians horrified by the American president.
Perhaps inspired by this unscripted, unprompted act of patriotic zeal, Myers went on to cut a campaign ad with Prime Minister, and Liberal Party candidate, Mark Carney. The two men are slightly uncool hockey dads in matching jerseys, standing by the boards, taking in the sights and sounds of practice. “Let’s go, let’s go,” Carney encourages the faceless skaters as they zip by.
The mood is teasing, jocular, a tiny bit tense. Carney spots Myers, and the two men exchange hellos. Carney asks Myers what he’s doing here, and Myers responds, “I just thought I’d come up, and check on things.” “You live in the States?” Carney asks him. “Yeah,” Myers responds, starting to get a bit testy, “but I’ll always be Canadian.” The prime minister refuses to let it go: “But—you live in the States?”
We cut back to Myers, and his tone goes up incredulously on each word of his two-word response, like he might have to drop his gloves and commence a fistfight with the prime minister of Canada: “Yeah? So?” (Has any comedian ever been better at being mildly irritated than Myers?) The whole of this brief but brisk ad is intended to wrongfoot Myers, to make him seem awkward and flinty and defensive.
Carney proceeds to offer Myers a rapid-fire answer-and-response pop quiz on his Canadianness, paying tribute to echt-Canadian rockers the Tragically Hip, the country song “Bud the Spud” by Stompin’ Tom Connors, and the hockey player, politician, and “Hockey Night in Canada” host Howie Meeker. Carney asks Myers to enumerate a strategy for a defenseman facing a two-on-one (“take away the pass, obviously”) and to identify the two seasons in Toronto (“winter and construction”). Myers’ tone is offended and a bit puzzled, but he starts to gain momentum as he progresses. Myers lets out a sigh of relief when Carney tells him he really is Canadian, and we can almost imagine him momentarily transforming into Wayne once more, letting off a Wayne Campbell “shuh, right” for the ages.
Instead, the mood transforms again, and Myers grows pensive: “But let me ask you, Mr. Prime Minister, will there always be a Canada?” Myers is now the child in search of reassurance from a demanding but kindly father. “There will always be a Canada,” Carney tells him, and Myers lets out a sigh of relief. “All right!” He raises his hand to his face and extends his forearm once more: “Elbows up!” Myers turns back toward the rink, and we get one last, lingering stinger. His jersey number is 51, and the nameplate, instead of “MYERS,” reads “NEVER.” Canada, Carney and Myers are politely but firmly telling us, will never be the 51st American state. And Canada’s elbows are up to bash anyone who seeks to do damage to the country.
I’ve now watched this video approximately one million times, getting little shivers of pleasure each time I catch a glimpse of Myers’ jersey, which is admittedly strange. I am not Canadian, although I have some wonderful friends who are. My knowledge of Canadian politics is admittedly thin. I did not know who Howie Meeker was.
But seeing Mike Myers again activated nostalgic muscles I did not know I had, and in this moment of maximal political and social turmoil, having Myers—who was not on my annotated list of the top one thousand celebrities most likely to Get Political—re-emerge as an avatar of plainspoken patriotism and decency gave me hope.
Celebrities are not our friends. They are not our allies, they are not our buddies, they are not our stand-ins. Putting hope in celebrities is a mug’s game. They will not save us from creeping authoritarianism, will not do the necessary work to keep the demons away. With all that said, though, in a moment when university presidents and law-firm managing partners are performing cringing obedience to the president of the United States rather than serving the people he torments, good on Mike Myers for doing the opposite. If now is not a time for courage, then pray tell, when is?
All of which leads me to the role that brought Myers back to Saturday Night Live, playing billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk. I would have never seen it myself, but Myers unexpectedly has the right mojo for Musk. He captures Musk’s delirious awkwardness, his unplaceable Bond-villain accent (we should have known!), and his adversarial relationship with his own body, which appears to lurch and quiver independent of his brain.
Myers even does Dr. Evil’s famous pinky-to-lips gesture as Musk, emphasizing the similarities between Musk and his Austin Powers villain as two rich, delusional weirdos. He enters the cold-open recap of the Trump-Vance-Zelensky meeting wielding an orange chainsaw, chuckling awkwardly to himself like the kid picked 11th for five-on-five basketball. He asks Trump what he is doing in his office, waits an awkward extra beat, then acknowledges that he is joking—or is he?
“Legalize comedy!” Musk shouts, flapping his arms and dancing in place before pulling a Zen face and tentpoling his fingers together like a parody of a man at peace with himself. (“I’m so comfortable with all of that,” James Austin Johnson’s Trump responds, pointing his thumb in the direction of his middle-aged goofball cheerleader/money man.) Trump and Musk welcome in Musk’s DOGE colleague, a 19-year-old who calls himself “Big Balls.” Big Balls announces a new government enterprise called DOUCHE, and Musk falls all over himself to make the requisite joke: “DOUCHE is gonna really clean everything out.”
There is much to be said about taking on our unelected co-president in this fashion, but what sticks with me, both here in his role as Musk, and in his comedic-political advocacy, is that Myers is willing to make himself awkward to sell a performance. He does not look cool as Elon Musk. He does not flatter his own best angles. He does not flatter himself. Myers and the SNL writers are looking to humiliate Musk, and Myers is willing to humiliate himself in the process. The same goes for Myers’ own advocacy for the nascent wave of elbows-up Canadian nationalism, in which he is willing to skip the punch line, or be the butt of the joke, for the greater good.
Will the result change the fate of liberal democracy in the West? No, it won’t. Will celebrities save us? Verily, they will not. But may we all find ways to embarrass ourselves for the greater good. Commence awkward leap!
What do you think of Mike Myers’ SNL return and using comedy as political advocacy? Let us know in the comments.