A day after Donald Trump threw a punch at Alec Baldwin on Twitter for his “dying mediocre career,” the latter devoted a six-minute cold open on Saturday Night Live to lampoon the president on a very topical subject.
The actor delivered a scathing speech mocking Trump’s ambivalent response to the Parkland shootings and stance on gun control. “It’s clear something has to change. We have to take a hard look at mental health, which I have so much of. I have one of the healthiest mental. My mentals are so high, but we have to respect the law,” Baldwin-as-Trump—with his signature mastery of the president’s facial expressions and lilting tone—said.
He went on: “Believe me, no one love the Second Amendment and due process more than me, but maybe we just take everyone’s guns, away, okay? Nobody is allowed to have a gun, not even whites… The youth of America deserve to feel safe and secure in their schools because, folks, I can only run into so many schools and save everybody. If I could I would run into all of them, even without a weapon, I’d burst through the doors and I’d be running so fast—I’m actually a very fast runner, people don’t know that—I’d be running so fast, the guy with the gun wouldn’t even know what hit him. So the schools would be safe now but I wouldn’t stop there. I’d run to North Korea completely unarmed, all over the Great Wall of Korea…”
Baldwin last week said in an interview that every time he plays the president now, “it’s like agony” and “we have to get rid of him.” Trump, in his tweet, said Baldwin’s performance was “agony for those who were forced to watch.”
Baldwin fired back with a rant of his own.