Alec Baldwin said ahead of Season 45 of Saturday Night Live that he was “done” playing Donald Trump on the show and that he’d rather be killed by a meteor than reprise the role. It’s an impression he himself has deemed “mediocre,” after all, and the thought was that someone else in the cast would have to take the reins in Season 45.
It seems that an impeachment inquiry into some suspicious activities with Ukraine, however, was enough to get Baldwin to dust off his Trump wig and give it a go in the cold open of Season 45’s premiere. The segment, which you can watch above, starts with Trump in the Oval Office making some worried phone calls.
Trump first talks to Rudy Giuliani, played by Kate McKinnon, who really needs to stop appearing on television news for his own sake. Giuliani assures Trump that no one will find out about what they’re covering up, but he does it while on CNN. Aidy Bryant’s Attorney General Bill Barr is up next, who’s working with… Rudy Giuliani to take care of things.
Mike Pence is set up as the “patsy” for Trump in the segment, and then Don Jr. and Eric also show up, with Eric making it clear that they took care of “the treason” in Russia like Trump asked. New cast member Bowen Yang quickly made an appearance on the show as well, showing up as Kim Jong-un of North Korea.
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) September 29, 2019
The weirdest bit of the segment is when Trump calls Liev Schreiber, who he thinks is the fictional character Ray Donovan. That was basically the end of a segment that was more about introducing who will be playing the characters in the impeachment proceedings on the forthcoming episodes more than actually saying much about said impeachment.
Trump mentions were sprinkled throughout the rest of the show, and an Impeachment Town Hall was the subject of another sketch entirely. It’s hard not to talk about the inquiry given the magnitude of things these days, and it seems clear that SNL will be on top of it in Season 45.
