Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live had its season premiere – with Margot Robbie as the host and The Weeknd as the musical guest.
The biggest story from the premiere though was the show mocking the first presidential debate – with Kate McKinnon reprising her Hillary Clinton role and Alec Baldwin stepping in as Donald Trump.
Baldwin hit the notes of Trump’s mannerisms perfectly – repeating phrases, making excuses, even his repeated sniffles from the first debate. As a piece of acting, he nailed Trump perfectly.
The only issue was that the sketch itself was toothless.
The time for making fun of Trump’s mannerisms has passed. The time for making fun of his orange skin, his small hands, his inarticulate phrasing, his short temper – have all passed. We had fun with it, and it’s time to move on. We cannot treat Trump as anything less than dangerous.
Lest you forget – Trump is the most unqualified candidate to ever run for president. He is historically racist – he fueled the Obama birther movement and originally created his campaign on the promise of deporting all illegal immigrants and banning Muslims from entering the country. He is a noted misogynist, seen this past week with his comments on former Miss Universe Alicia Machado. He is a bad businessman – he lost nearly a billion dollars in his 1995 tax return released this weekend, and is a total crook – see the Trump University scandal or him using a quarter-billion dollars from one of his charities to settle legal debts. We could also talk about how Trump has spoken highly of brutal dictators like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un. Or we could talk about how Trump has no interest in policy, but has still threatened to break trade and treaty agreements because “they’re bad deals”. We could dedicate the rest of this website to writing daily articles about his failings as a businessman and a human.
And he is dangerously close to actually becoming the president of the United States.
We are five weeks from election day. FiveThirtyEight had Trump’s odds of winning today at 31%. While it may appear that Hillary is winning by a comfortable margin, Trump would win the presidency in one out of three coin flips. We have no margin for error, and should take no chances in normalizing Trump’s behavior.
By painting Trump as a doofus instead of a crook – Saturday Night Live undersells the real danger a Trump presidency would do to this country. By making fun of his mannerisms and peculiarities right alongside Hillary rather than painting him as the sleazy conman he is, Saturday Night Live is doing a disservice to the American public.
Of course, this isn’t surprising for NBC and Saturday Night Live. NBC made a statement last June that they were ending their business relationship with Donald Trump. Five months later, Trump is hosting Saturday Night Live. And now, SNL just used the Trump train to get its highest premiere rating in eight years.
We hope those eyeballs were worth your dignity, Lorne.
Of course, this isn’t the first time NBC has played nice with Trump. Just a few weeks ago, Trump was on The Tonight Show. And while nobody will confuse Jimmy Fallon with Edward Murrow, it was a little dispiriting to see Fallon playing with Trump’s hair to a crowd of millions as if everything was totally okay.
We’re done with the lightheartedness. Save it for after the election. We’d rather err on the side of being over-dramatic than being blindsided.
Shame on Lorne Michaels, Alec Baldwin and NBC for peddling Trump as a teddy bear rather than the demagogue he is.
