SNL Takes Donald Trump to The People's Court

With Alec Baldwin coming in as host for last night's new episode of Saturday Night Live, it was almost a guarantee that he'd slap on the blonde wig and fish face to impersonate President Donald Trump yet again. Lo and behold, he did, and it was arguably even more spectacular than his prior showings.

This week, Baldwin played upon Trump's infamous Twitter response to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision not to lift the stay on his Muslim travel ban Executive Order, which read as follows:

In the skit, Trump's words are taken to heart -- since the object of his digital threat wasn't immediately clear, many assumed he meant he wanted to take the 9th Circuit's panel to court, and given the structure of the judiciary that's... not how it works.

So, instead of offering him a quickfire round of Constitutional Law lessons, SNL indulged Trump's grand idea with a visit to The People's Court, a fitting venue for a "TV president" indeed. With a character witness appearance from Vladimir Putin, a refusal to testify under oath, and the accusation that the three-panel Circuit judges were letting "bad hombres" flood into the country by their actions, this is an instant classic.
Baldwin's reprisal of Trump wasn't the only presidential pastiche of the evening either. Perhaps as a sly response to the rumor that Trump was irked by Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer sketch because she's a woman, Leslie Jones threw her ring in the hat to play Trump once Baldwin inevitably grows weary of the task.

She gets shot down by executive producer Lorne Michaels in the sketch, of course, but not before she gets the chance to don the Don's 'do and run a few lines in character.

The political punnery didn't stop there, of course. Not only did Melissa McCarthy bring a "new Spicey" to the podium, but Kate McKinnon as presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway went full-on Fatal Attraction on CNN's Jake Tapper, who'd declined an invitation to interview her due to perceived credibility concerns but ultimately hosted her for a 25-minute session last Tuesday.

Perhaps this sketch might explain the about-face after all.

And because McKinnon is an unstoppable force majeure of the SNL lineup, she also appeared in a third political parody this week (adding to the above and a cameo as Jeff Sessions to the McSpicer skit). She joined the "Weekend Update" slot as Sen. Elizabeth Warren to make light of her polite but thorough vetting style and the fact that she's one of the few Democrats on Capitol Hill who's refusing to budge on her beliefs, despite being outnumbered at present and silenced on the Senate floor during Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearing.

"Nevertheless, she persisted" has basically become a gift-wrapped campaign slogan for Warren, so we can probably expect to see McKinnon's bespectacled portrayal even more often in the future.