It’s been a while since we’ve seen Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump on SNL — since the Kanye meeting sketch, which should tell you how long it’s been — and possibly for good reason: He did kind of almost get arraigned for flipping out over a parking spot IRL. That’s never officially been issued as the reason for his being AWOL, even during political cold opens that could have used his take on the sitting prez.
There was some talk that he might not be needed. Perhaps SNL honcho Lorne Michaels would enlist Dana Carvey to fly to New York City and honor the just departed George H.W. Bush with his classic impersonation, some wildly speculated.
Alas, no, Baldwin returned, to ring out a low in the president’s current history: Him being once again the odd man out at the G20 Summit, which is right now being held in Argentina, and where he’s the only world leader who isn’t on-boards with the Paris Agreement to combat climate change . There was that photo of Trump in the background, looking dejected as his bestie/our current actual president, Vladimir Putin, bro’ing out with Fred Armisen’s Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Al Saud, the two bonding and high-fiving over how the latter almost certainly ordered the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
And so Baldwin’s The Donald stood outside on the balcony of the Park Hyatt, pitying himself, crowing about how lonely he was, talking to the occasional passerby. Among those briefly keeping him company were Cecily Strong’s Melania, Beck Bennett’s topless Putin, and Kate McKinnon’s Rudy Giuliani, to whom Trump said, “I want to fire you but you know all my secrets.”
There were big guest stars, too — not just SNL alum Armisen, but Ben Stiller, who popped up as Michael Cohen, Trump’s prison-bound lawyer. “You were like a son to me,” Trump told a distraught Cohen. “Then why did you make me do all that illegal stuff?” Cohen asked. “Because you were like a son to me.”
The sketch capped with our president singing his own version of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” the classic song from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita. He just changed the words a bit:
Don’t cry for me, Argentina
The truth is I’m very guilty
Some little no-nos, and maybe treason
But I kept my promise — Oops, no I didn’t
Poor guy. Sort of.
