Saturday Night Live cold open: Baldwin’s Trump & a National Emergency

Saturday Night Live

Going into this weekend’s new Saturday Night Live episode, it was clear Alec Baldwin was returning as Donald Trump. NBC made the somewhat-unusual step of confirming that in advance.

Related SNL video – Be sure to check out some more thoughts regarding the series at the bottom of this article! If you like this, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more and be sure to check out our series playlist.

The question that you were left to wonder after the fact was simply this: How would the sketch show use him? What would he bring to the table here? The end result, as it turns out, was just finding a way in order to have him, as Trump, talk about a National Emergency. Most of this was pretty predictable — humor about China (which he still cannot pronounce correctly), Trump not really wanting to be President, and his love of the Wall.

What was funny about this version of Trump was that Baldwin actually kept it a little more low-key. Baldwin’s voice was a little slower and while he was still funny, the energy wasn’t quite the same. The thing that was perhaps the weirdest about the cold open is that there isn’t really one moment that stands out. Probably the best part of it was “Trump” saying that Jim Acosta’s numbers were “faker than this emergency.”

The problem with seeing Baldwin as Trump at the moment is that it’s been done so many times. Also, we live in a world where humor is so spontaneously that the Trump – National Emergency press conference somehow feels a little old. Also, how does the real press conference mention Ann Coulter and this one doesn’t? It almost feels like the real version was somehow more off-the-rails than what we saw here. Consider this a reminder that the best Trump – SNL sketches are the ones that actually don’t just mimic what’s happening in the real world. It’s better when there is a totally new angle — take, for example, the spoof of The Bachelor we saw last season.

Still, if seeing Trump spoofs is your jam, there’s a pretty good chance that you loved just about every second of this.

Related News Be sure to get some more information on tonight’s episode, including a full review

What do you think about this week’s Saturday Night Live cold open? Be sure to share right now in the comments. (Photo: NBC.)

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