President-elect Donald Trump may be reportedly shooing away national security briefings because he’s just too busy, but he certainly seems to have time to hate-watch Saturday Night Live. The president-elect knows he won’t like the show (or does he think Alec Baldwin will suddenly start playing him like a working-class hero?), but he seemingly can’t help to tune in. So it was yet again this weekend. If we didn’t know any better we’d think SNL baited Trump, doing a whole sketch on how the president-elect can’t stop tweeting (or more specifically retweeting random Twitter users) just to see how he’d react.
Sure enough, Donald Trump took the bait and he didn’t even wait to sleep on it. Barely an hour after the show had aired, Trump went on twitter to call SNL “unwatchable” “totally biased,” and “not funny.”
This marked the third time in two months that Trump went on Twitter to specifically blast a comedy show that pokes fun at him. The first time came when he was campaigning to be the leader of the free world: “Watched Saturday Night Live hit job on me.Time to retire the boring and unfunny show. Alec Baldwin portrayal stinks.”
The second time came after Trump had already won the election. Sure, he may be the most powerful man in the country, but he simply couldn’t let go of Baldwin playing him as a clueless leader who had to Google ISIS and back away from his campaign promises. “I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night,” he wrote. “It is a totally one-sided, biased show - nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?”
The difference between the past two times that Trump criticized the show while campaigning for (and then becoming) leader of the free world? Baldwin offered to give up his impersonation—with one tiny condition. Through his foundation’s Twitter account, Baldwin wrote: “Release your tax returns and I’ll stop. Ha.”
