Not Ready for Primetime

S.N.L.: Alec Baldwin’s Trump Tries to Dodge Pee Jokes; Trump Responds [Updated]

Even a visit from Vladimir Putin couldn’t stop the stream.

Update (January 15, 2017, 8:30 P.M.): And, like clockwork, Donald Trump has indeed responded to Saturday Night Live’s latest episode via Twitter:

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The first Saturday Night Live sketch of 2017 began on a fairly sobering note: guest star Alec Baldwin, posing as president-elect Donald Trump at his bizarre Wednesday press conference and asserting, gravely, “Yes, this is real life. This is really happening.”

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Things got a little lighter from there, though, as the sketch went on to hit a variety of Trump-related targets: the businessman’s questionable proposal to solve his various conflicts of interest, his even more questionable proposal to replace Obamacare (Trump’s plan, said Baldwin, is “called the Affordable Care Act”), his less-than-invigorating inauguration entertainment lineup.

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The sketch’s most gleeful jabs, though, came—predictably—when reporters began to question Baldwin’s Trump about, and we quote, “the big Russian pee pee party.” Naturally, the Trump character had no desire to discuss those unverified allegations; naturally, the sketch kept coming back to them anyway.

Even when the president-elect tried to switch streams—er, gears!—he couldn’t help getting caught in Urinetown: “I am going to bring back a thick stream of jobs back to this country,” he declared. “This country will be literally showered with jobs, because I am a major whiz with jobs.” Even an impromptu visit from Beck Bennett’s Vladimir Putin couldn’t damn the river—perhaps because the Russian strongman came to the stage armed with a very important prop: a cassette labeled “Pee Pee Tape.” Chances are we’ll learn just what Trump thought of that gag before long.