In the four to eight years of a future Trump presidency, without a doubt many comedians will take jabs at our commander in chief; even before he won the election, celebrities have been showing off their Trump impressions. Earlier this year, Johnny Depp played him in a Funny Or Die parody clip. In his recent Netflix standup special, the first thing Dana Carvey says is “let’s talk about Donald Trump”. And, not surprising anybody, Saturday Night Live has been steadily mocking the President-elect. In the past year, three different actors – Taran Killam, Darrell Hammond and Alec Baldwin – have impersonated him on the show. Yet the latter’s performance has drawn the most attention by far, partially because Donald Trump hates it so much.
In this past weekend’s episode, Baldwin plays a President-elect who is shooing away national security briefings because he’s too busy retweeting other people. Barely an hour after the show had aired, Trump went on Twitter to call it “unwatchable”, “not funny” and “totally biased”. This marks the third time in the past two months that Trump has turned to Twitter to attack SNL. Considering how strongly Trump disapproves of the show’s portrayal of him, I wouldn’t be surprised if Alec Baldwin, a vocal liberal, is doing it simply to upset the President-elect. Through his foundation’s Twitter account, Baldwin has been tweeting back, promising that he’ll stop if Trump releases his tax returns.
It’s interesting to see that out of the various impersonations out there, Donald Trump dislikes this one so much more. My more liberal acquaintances often repost Trump thinkpieces that clog up my newsfeed, some of which have discussed this. Yet none of these Vox and Daily Kos articles can agree as to why Donald Trump hates Alec Baldwin’s impression most of all. The one thing that is certain, however, is that Trump’s vocal displeasure is doing nothing but encourage Baldwin.