When NBC announced it would welcome presidential candidate and empty popcorn bag rotting in the sun Donald Trump as host of Saturday Night Live, the country was generally aghast. Not only is hosting while running for president essentially unheard of, but the network had months before severed ties with Trump after he revealed himself over and over again to be unapologetically racist.
Still, I would drink drinks and cover the television Event for Jezebel because I am a trooper and it was an historic moment regardless of whether I wanted to recognize it. It would probably be some kind of glorious train wreck anyway.
But it was not a glorious train wreck. It was a tedious, unfunny hour-and-a-half long campaign ad, to which neither Trump nor the cast nor the writers seemed dedicated. And about which I am unable to write with humor or perspective because I feel as if all the life-sustaining liquids in my bod have been wrung out onto the floor.
Perhaps because of television’s “equal time” rule which requires networks to offer equal time to every political candidate, Trump was absent from the majority of the episode—Variety measured his screen time at only 12 minutes of the 1.5-hour program. But his presence was fucking everywhere, mostly in the form of self-referential sketches where his name was either discussed or on screen the entire time. Let’s take a look:
The Monologue
This four-minute talk seems to have been the point of booking him since it was the only time he really had anything to do. His second joke, which he delivered to truly tepid laughter, ignited my internal rage fire, which would continue to burn until I went to sleep heaving at 2 a.m.:“A lot of people are saying, ‘Donald, you’re the most amazing guy. You’re brilliant, you’re handsome, you’re rich, you have everything going. The world is waiting for you to be president, so why are you hosting Saturday Night Live?” he said. “And the answer is, I have really nothing better to do.”
The thing is, he was clearly desperate to be on the show—far more than SNL was to have him, I continue to hope—and that exhausting juxtaposition made for thoroughly uncomfortable television. Watch the rest of the monologue to see Larry David (who was there to play Bernie Sanders in the cold open) call him a racist as a bit, and to see Trump flanked by Taran Killam and Darrell Hammond’s Trumps.
White House 2018
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