Alec Baldwin Suggests Trump’s Rant About His ‘SNL’ Impersonation Could Be A Threat To His Family’s Safety
Alec Baldwin is speaking out following Donald Trump’s recent angry tweets about Saturday Night Live. Baldwin, who regularly portrays the 45th president on the NBC late-night sketch comedy show, responded to Trump’s claims that Saturday Night Live’s portrayal of him is “unfunny and unfair, “and that there should be “retribution” for the show’s representation of the Republican party.
Baldwin later took to Twitter to ask if Trump’s tweet about SNL “constitutes a threat” to his family’s safety, according to CNN.
Alec Baldwin’s most recent Saturday Night Live impersonation recreated Trump’s Friday morning speech from the White House Rose Garden, where he declared a national emergency when speaking about the need for a border wall. Trump fired off a tweet storm on Sunday morning, questioning how NBC and other networks “get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution.”
“This is the real Collusion,” Trump wrote.
Donald Trump has long targeted the “corrupt media” and news outlets that he calls the “enemy of the people.”
Following Trump’s latest SNL rant, Alec Baldwin tweeted, “I wonder if a sitting President exhorting his followers that my role in a TV comedy qualifies me as an enemy of the people constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?”
"Wall works. Wall makes safe. … Abuelas and bebes unless you give me wall," Alec Baldwin says as he mocks President Trump's declaration of national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border on 'SNL.' https://t.co/HAPD7GIMoK
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 17, 2019
Despite his successful SNL impersonation of Trump, Alec Baldwin has been vocal about his disdain for the former Apprentice star. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Baldwin said he is in “agony” every time he has to do the presidential impression. The actor also said almost anyone on the street would be more qualified — “ethically, morally, intellectually and spiritually” — to be president than Trump.
“Anybody over this guy,” Baldwin said last year. “It doesn’t matter. We have to get rid of him.”
Trump later fired back on Twitter, mocking Alec Baldwin as someone whose “dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation of me on SNL.”
“Alec, it was agony for those who were forced to watch. Bring back Darrell Hammond, funnier and a far greater talent,” Trump tweeted.
Donald Trump’s beef with Saturday Night Live comes four years after he hosted the show himself. In November 2015, then-presidential candidate Trump delivered the opening monologue and appeared in several sketches on Saturday Night Live. In the weeks ahead of Trump’s appearance, protesters camped outside of NBC’s studios tried to stop his hosting gig, but the show went on.
Former Saturday Night Live star Taran Killam, who shared sketches with the future president on the 2015 episode of the NBC comedy, later told NPR that it was a “rough” week working with Donald Trump.
“It was not enjoyable at the time and something that only grows more embarrassing and shameful as time goes on,” the former SNL cast member said. “There’s nothing good I can take away from that week.”
Killam said that upon reflection, he was “embarrassed” by Trump’s cameo because “every person outside of that building protesting was absolutely right.”
You can see Alec Baldwin’s latest portrayal of Donald Trump in the Saturday Night Live cold open below.
Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. on NBC.
