On last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, the show devoted its cold open to the presidential debate from earlier in the week, and it seems like the surreal absurdity of Donald Trump’s behavior during the debates has officially hit the point where satire struggles to keep up.
SNL’s final debate asks: who do you trust to be president? The Republican, or Donald Trump?
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
This week Trump made headlines for calling America’s democracy into question, calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman,“ and for a spouting a buffoonish myth about late-term abortion — all in one debate.
That’s perhaps why the sketch started off with Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton relishing the moment, sounding like a Spartan warrior.
“In the first debate, I set the table. In the second debate, I fired up the grill,” McKinnon’s Clinton told Chris Wallace (played by host Tom Hanks). “Tonight, I feast.”
Alec Baldwin’s Trump, an impression that Trump himself bemoans, mostly stuck to what Trump said in the debate — a word salad answer about Mosul, saying that late-term abortions are literally procedures where babies are ripped out of vaginas the day before birth, and calling people “bad hombres.”
“Bingo! I got bingo!” Clinton says holding up a card showing off all the insults Trump has unleashed during this presidential campaign.
SNL eventually circled in on what’s considered the moment when Trump lost the debate — when he insinuated that the election was rigged.
“Frankly, this whole thing is rigged,” he said. “All the newscasters are making me look so bad — by taking all the things I say, and all the things I do, and putting them on TV.”
“You’re probably going to lose,” Hanks’s Wallace said.
“Correct,” Baldwin’s Trump deadpans.
The best part of the skit comes toward the end, when they twist Trump’s “such a nasty woman” insult into a “bitches get stuff done” moment for Hillary.
“Who do you trust to be the president? The Republican, or Donald Trump?” she asks, pleading her case. “America “He’s an F. America, you deserve better than an F. So on November 8, vote for me, and I promise I will be a stone-cold B.”
