Trump: Show does ‘Republican hit job’
President bashes comedy after mockery, threatens ‘retribution’
President Trump is reviving his longstanding beef with “Saturday Night Live,” slamming the show as “very unfair” and deserving of “retribution” after it mocked him again this weekend.
The weekly comedy sketch show opened late Saturday night with actor Alec Baldwin returning to impersonate Trump, jabbing at the president’s announcement last week that he was declaring an emergency in an effort to get money to build the southern border wall he’s promised.
“We have a tremendous amount of drugs flowing into the country from the southern border — or the brown line, as many people have asked me not to call it,” Baldwin said in character as Trump. “That’s why we need wall. Because wall works. Wall makes safe.”
Earlier in the skit — while pursing his lips and imitat- ing Trump’s particular accent and cadence — Baldwin lampooned Trump’s recent personal heath report, further exaggerating what some on the left have suspected was cast in a flattering light for the president. “I just had a great health exam. I’m still standing 6-foot-7, 185 pounds, shredded,” Baldwin said.
The president didn’t like the schtick, tweeting Sunday morning, “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
A few minutes later, he wrote, “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Baldwin reprises his role on “SNL” as Trump periodically, often to the president’s displeasure, such as in December, when he tweeted, “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 & belit- tle! Collusion?”
After the most recent “SNL”-related tweet, University of Texas Law professor Steve Vladeck wrote back to Trump, “‘Without retribution?’ Umm, maybe because we don’t punish constitutionally protected speech in this country?”