Saturday Night Live began its final episode of 2018 with a Trump sketch, because of course it did. It was a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life, with The Donald (Alec Baldwin) seeing what the world would be like if he hadn’t won if the Electoral College hadn’t named him president despite him losing the popular vote. It imagined that everyone would be better off — not just the world, but everyone around him, from Sarah Huckabee Sanders to Melania to Michael Cohen to 45 himself. If anything, that’s not even mean, it’s charitable: None of these people deserve happiness, in this dimension or another.
But Trump didn’t see it that way. No stranger to targeting SNL in his Sunday morning tweetstorms, the former SNL host decided to up the ante, suggesting governmental action for entertainers who dared say unkind things about him.
A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
“A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live,” the former reality TV show star tweeted. “It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?”
Are those question marks actual questions? Because it sounds like the president of the United States doesn’t know how the laws of the country he runs work, nor how much power he actually has. Nor does he seem concerned with all these comparisons people have long made of him to dictators, some of whom he openly admires. Also unclear: whether or not he knows what “collusion” means. He should probably Google it before he’s sentenced for it.
In any case, far as diversionary tactics go — attempts to distract people from the news that, say, he may be indicted or even impeached because of a lifetime of shady business practices — this is nothing. In this mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world he’s created, an American president implying he wants to curtail first amendment rights à la Bolsonaro or Erdogan is probably worth ignoring.
You can watch the controversial sketch below:
(Via Consequence of Sound)
