Actor Alec Baldwin is defending portraying President Donald Trump during “Saturday Night Live’s” (SNL) premiere over the weekend where he mocked the president over COVID-19. The skit came as the president is infected with the virus.
While noting that the goal is never to “sink the ship,” Baldwin said in an Instagram video posted on Sunday, “If there was ever the suggestion that Trump was truly, gravely ill and people said, ‘Trump is really in trouble,’ I bet you everything I have that we wouldn’t even get near that in terms of the content on the show.”
He continued, “We only have the words of the White House itself and the people who work there to go on, and all of them have been saying he’s not in any danger,” Baldwin said in an Instagram video posted on Sunday.
The actor said that if there were any indication Trump was in “serious trouble” then they would not have done it, “but that’s not the case.”
He added:
“You have to have a very good reason to avoid that topicality-wise. And nobody thought they were mocking somebody’s illness. There are a lot of people out there who have the deepest amount of animosity I could possibly calculate in my adult life toward Trump, but there’s a line we won’t cross.”
See Baldwin’s video below:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CF7fQdnjVW7/?utm_source=ig_embed
The SNL premiere featured Baldwin as Trump and actor Jim Carrey portraying Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. The cold open featured the two recreating the first presidential debate that occurred on Sept. 29.
“The China virus has been very mean to me by being a hoax and that statement will not come back to haunt me later this week,” Baldwin said during the SNL cold open.
See the video below:
Carrey has expressed his distaste of the president, including recently blasting Trump’s drive-by on Sunday outside of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Covid infected Trump takes the Secret Service for a dangerous ride so he can reconnect with his patriotic base. #BidenHarris pic.twitter.com/C4yaLTxFc0
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) October 5, 2020
During the cold open, Carrey, playing Biden, said to the audience, “You can trust me because I believe in science and karma. Now just imagine if science and karma could somehow team up to send us all a message about how dangerous this virus can be.”
He added, “I’m not saying I want it to happen. Just imagine it did. So this November, please get on the Biden train, which is literally a commuter train to Delaware. And we can all make America not actively on fire again.”
