Alec Baldwin returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’ to play Donald Trump—and Bill O’Reilly
“Can I just say, I also see a lot of myself in you, Bill."
After a month-long hiatus, Saturday Night Live returned last night, along with this season’s most frequent guest star and regular Donald Trump impresario Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin’s cameo Saturday night included more than just a Trump impression. But that was how it started.
In the show’s cold open, “President Trump” made a quick trip to visit his loyal supporters in coal country and found that their loyalty to him went to stunning lengths.
“Mr. President, thank you so much, but all we want are good jobs,” said one supporter. “They don’t have to be in coal.”
“Sorry, hombre. It’s all coal,” Baldwin replied. “In Trump’s America, men work in two places: Coal mines and Goldman Sachs.”
Trump went on to pledge to eliminate all coal mine regulation, health care (not just the Affordable Care Act; in general), federal drug rehabilitation programs, after-school programs, the minimum wage, and supporters’ homes. He did however pledge to keep lead-contaminated water.
“We cool?” the president asked. “We still love Trump, right? We still love Trump?”
Indeed, they did.
Later in the show, Baldwin returned — not as Trump — but as the scandal-plagued Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly.
Following a New York Times report last weekend revealing the network paid out millions of dollars in settlements over alleged sexual harassment by the host, O’Reilly’s show has lost more than 70 advertisers. That point was not lost in Saturday’s sketch.
“We thank the following sponsors for sticking with us,” Baldwin said, before ads from “Dog Cocaine,” a prescription-strength drug billed as “Cialis for horses,” and the movie Chips.
Following an awkward interview with one of the show’s female correspondents, Baldwin introduced another interview subject: Trump, yet again played by Baldwin himself.
“Can I just say, I also see a lot of myself in you, Bill,” Baldwin, as Trump, told Baldwin, as O’Reilly, in a statement that carried a few levels of meaning.
O’Reilly then thanked Trump for his support, which the president said was based on a hunch.
“So you’re not familiar with the facts of the case?” the host asked.
“I mean, I’m more familiar with this case then I am with, say, health care, but I didn’t really look into it much, no,” Trump replied. “I was too busy being super presidential by bombing a bunch of s—.”
