As you know, America is currently in the midst of a national emergency: We have a president who just declared a “national emergency.” Because Donald J. Trump failed at the art of the deal with Democratic lawmakers, he’ll be trying to fund his precious border wall the old fashioned way: By using presidential power to siphon money from parts of the government that need it to a wall that only his staunchest, MAGA-iest fans even want.
And so the Alec Baldwin signal went up. The actor doesn’t swing by SNL every weekend — only if it’s, well, an emergency. And it was. In a parody of the president’s national emergency press briefing, Baldwin’s Trump stood in front of reporters he hated to, first, claim he was 6’7” and 145 pounds (“shredded”), then declare that, “We need wall, okay?” He also added, “Wall works. Wall means safe.”
He explained his clear, Spock-like reasoning, though he admitted that “it’s easier to understand if you’re not that smart.” He went on: “We have a tremendous amount of drugs from the Southern border — or the ‘brown line,’ as many people have asked me not to call it.”
Baldwin also mocked the way Trump delivered part of his speech by raising his voice every few words, over and over and over again, until the experience became hypnotic. He laid out how things we go from here, which is to say he will wind up in jail. He concluded: “And my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.”
There were also some, what he called, “softball questions” from the press. (That is, after he randomly mentioned that he and Melania are big fans of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) He discussed tariffs with “Jyna,” did racist impersonations of Chuck Schumer and others, and got a little too excited when one reporter revealed he was from Playboy. He lost his temper when one journalist pointed out that illegal immigration is actually down, if anything, and that illegal immigrants commit far, far fewer crimes than natives.
To that, Trump had one retort: “Those numbers are faker than this emergency.”
