Following Baldwin’s performance as Trump — who was recently diagnosed with COVID-19, along with First Lady Melania Trump — Baldwin was met with criticism from many conservatives for making fun of the president’s illness.
Viewers have praised the sketch, especially its portrayal of Trump’s numerous interruptions at the debate, but Baldwin addressed those who found the jokes in poor taste due to the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization this week.
In a lengthy Instagram video, Baldwin said that SNL wouldn’t have poked fun at Trump’s diagnosis if the team thought he was “truly, gravely ill.”
“If there was ever the suggestion that Trump was truly, gravely ill, and people said, ‘Trump is really in trouble,’ then I would bet you everything I have that we wouldn’t even get near that, in terms of content of the show,” Baldwin said in a lengthy video he shared on Sunday. “They would have done something else. I’ve seen that happen before.”
Baldwin’s Trump appeared during the Cold Open sketch, which lampooned the first presidential debate. The sketch also marked the premiere of new guest star Jim Carrey, who has signed on to play Joe Biden in the coming weeks leading up to the election.
The sketch itself largely focused on poking fun at the chaotic nature of the debate, as well as Trump’s aggressive, interruptive demeanor and Biden’s rambling rebuttals. Only a few passing references were made to Trump’s illness during the sketch itself.
“We thought the debate was something topical, and we didn’t have anything with him in a hospital bed, but we had the debate,” Baldwin explained. “You’d have to have a very good reason to avoid that, topicality-wise, and nobody thought that they were mocking somebody’s illness by doing that.”
A few hours ahead of SNL’s premiere, Trump released a four-minute video on Twitter declaring that he was “starting to feel good” and that he thinks he’ll “be back soon.”
The cold open only briefly touched on Trump contracting coronavirus. As the president, Baldwin quipped on stage, “The China Virus has been very mean to me by being a hoax, and that statement will not come back to haunt me later this week.”
“We only have the words of the White House itself and the people who work there themselves to go on, and all of them have all been saying he isn’t in any danger. We only have their word to go by,” Baldwin added. “And if their word was that he was in serious trouble, then we probably wouldn’t have done it.
“We thought the debate was something topical, and we didn’t have anything with him in a hospital bed, but we had the debate,” Baldwin added. “You’d have to have a very good reason to avoid that, topicality-wise, and nobody thought that they were mocking somebody’s illness by doing that.”
Baldwin continued, “There are a lot of people out there who have the deepest amount of animosity I could possibly calculate in my adult life toward Trump, but there’s a line they won’t cross. They wouldn’t say, ‘I wish something happened to him,’ or that he died, or whatever. And people who do that, that’s not the way it should be.”
Baldwin has often lampooned Trump since the 2016 presidential elections, and last season he skewered the president’s handling of COVID-19, which has taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans. In 2017, Baldwin won an Emmy for his portrayal.
Source: www.etonline.com/ www.ew.com/
