During Saturday Night Live’s cold open, Alec Baldwin debuted his Donald Trump impersonation and Kate McKinnon revived her Hillary Clinton to recreate the first presidential debate. It was as good and mean as you’d hoped.
When Michael Che’s Lester Holt introduced Hillary as someone who has “been battling pneumonia,” McKinnon-as-Clinton staggered out with a cane and a cough before ditching both to do a somersault. “I’m better than ever, let’s do this!” she shouted.
The real savage stuff was, as you’d expect, reserved for Trump. First, Holt welcomed him as “the man responsible for the bottom half of his kids’ faces.” The Republican candidate then boasted that he was “going to be so calm and so presidential that all of you watching are going to cream your jeans.”
Later, Baldwin’s Trump attempted to explain how he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity about his opposition to the Iraq War. “I told him in private,” he said. “It was just me and Sean late at night and I leaned over, whispered in his ear, ‘Sean, I’m against the war in Iraq.’ And then he whispered in my ear, ‘I’m against the way too.’ And the next thing I knew I was kissing Sean Hannity.”
When Holt asked about why he thought his temperament was better than Clinton’s, Trump said: “Because it is. I have the judgement and temperament She’s the one with the bad temperament. She’s always screaming. She’s always lying. Her face is completely orange except for around the eyes where it’s white. And when she stops talking her mouth looks like a tiny, little butthole.”
The show also lampooned Trump’s racism. “The thing about the blacks is that they’re killing each other,” he said. “They all live on one street in Chicago. It’s called Hell Street. And they’re just killing each other, just like I’m killing this debate.” He also regularly referred to Holt as “Jazzman” and “Coltrane.”
Making Saturday Night Live funny again might be the only silver lining to this hellish campaign season. Watch the full fake debate below, and then revisit the real Hillary Clinton’s interview on Between Two Ferns.
