STAHL TACTICS
Trump tantrum confirms why 60 Minutes and SNL still have respect
Saturday Night Live Saturdays, Global/NBC
60 Minutes Sundays, CBS
Watching the full 60 Minutes version of Donald Trump getting up and angrily leaving his interview with Lesley Stahl was a sad and predictable move on the president's part — a replay of his only consistent message, the fake news media is always out to get him.
Might their encounter become a Saturday Night Live sketch? By leaking White House-recorded video of the exchange before Sunday night's broadcast of the venerable CBS newsmagazine, perhaps Trump was hoping for just that sort of outcome — an opportunity for a send-up, on the off-chance his shamefully petulant behaviour might be seen as a clever triumph over the media.
SNL didn't take the bait, choosing to cold-open Saturday's episode in its customary, election-year way, with a sketch about last week's final debate between the president (Alec Baldwin) and Democratic nominee Joe Biden (Jim Carrey).
Sometimes, however, one can almost sense SNL and 60 Minutes in a kind of age-old weekend volley. They are two of TV's oldest institutions (debuting in 1975 and 1968, respectively), yet together they retain a surprising vitality and relevance in this chaotic 21st-century presidential campaign. Viewers still look to 60 Minutes to get to the bottom of things, and SNL for a reminder to laugh.
Only one of these shows is looking like a success right now. 60 Minutes has delivered timely and highly informative reports this fall on the coronavirus pandemic, as well as eye-opening stories on the climate, the border wall, voter suppression and an exclusive interview with Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as he recovers from a poisoning attack.
SNL, meanwhile, faces the mighty challenge during a pandemic of safely keeping its show “live from New York” and has clearly struggled to come up with original and funny material since its Oct. 3 season première. Yet, whether out of habit or eternal hope, viewers return each week in much the same way that 60 Minutes viewers are lured by that ticking stopwatch — the promise of reliability.
Stahl's interview with Trump was a snit fit, with the president interrupting and snapping at the correspondent, ducking her questions the same way he ducked the show's lighting rigs on his swift exit — petulance from a prickly president whose supposed mastery of message has gone limp.
Trump, always the martyr, insisted 60 Minutes would only lob softballs at Biden, who was interviewed on the same episode — itself a tradition during a presidential campaign season's penultimate Sunday.
Fittingly, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell brought out tough questions for Biden, and often wouldn't settle for his easiest replies. In marked contrast to Trump, he answered all of them like a grown-up.
One watches the president flee from Stahl (handing her a ratings boost, as well as lasting proof he can't tolerate difficult questions), and wonders how he, a television addict, can really know so little about television history: Has anyone, in the 52-year run of 60 Minutes, ever come out ahead by trying to dodge the cameras? As SNL's Kate McKinnon said during one of the show's rare moments of brilliance this season, as Weekend Update health expert, Dr. Wayne Wenowdis: We know dis.
We know this, thanks in part to what SNL has taught us about spotting a phoney. As far back as a 60 Minutes SNL sketch in 1984, Martin Short played Nathan Thurm, the nervous, hyper-defensive attorney representing a sweatshop that manufactured defective novelty toys.
Thurm tried to fend off Mike Wallace (Harry Shearer), by stalling, obfuscating, denying: “So what are you saying?” “Why would you say that?” (“Is it me?” Thurm asks the camera. “It's not me, it's him, right?”)
The president may have thought he played tough with 60 Minutes on Sunday night, but he wound up doing his own impression of Nathan Thurm: “You're so negative, you're so negative,” Trump taunted Stahl, unintentionally echoing some of Thurm's strategy, by trying to discredit the journalist's intent.
“Why are you pointing the finger at other people all the time? Why don't you point the finger at yourself?”
Who said it? Trump or Thurm? Longtime viewers of both shows will know.