Humiliating himself in his conduct interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week, Bret Baier probably won’t find the bracing cold open of Saturday Night Live tonight very amusing. As the Fox News anchor was in his sit-down with the VP on October 16, Baier will be in the wrong.
“The pleasure is neither of ours,” said Maya Rudolph to the Alec Baldwin portrayed Baier in the very funny and sharp cold open. Yes, you read that right: Alec Baldwin.
In a bit of shocker, this is long time Donald Trump playing Baldwin’s first return to SNL since his involuntary manslaughter trial for the 2021 fatal shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was tossed out this July because of suppressed evidence by New Mexico prosecutors. Before the trial, that could have seen him behind bars for up to 18 months if found guilty, 17-time SNL host Baldwin previously was back on the Lorne Micheals run late night back in November 2023 after a three year break in a very brief cameo in a sketch about the Calm app.
As Baier, tonight was a full on role for the 30 Rock star.
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Calling Baldwin’s Baier “Lego Man,” Rudolph’s Emmy winning Harris emphasized her toughness and online presence. “If I was in Breaking Bad it would have been three episodes,” she quipped before turning to a cell phone camera to break the fourth wall – as you can see below:
Bret Baier interviews Kamala Harris for Fox News pic.twitter.com/buxgtehKYr
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) October 20, 2024
“I am here doing an interview with an openly hostile network and Donald Trump has canceled all of his interview,” the SNL VP later added of the ex-POTUS.
“You’re very sexy when you’re angry, you know that?” Baldwin’s Baier told Rudolph’s Veep. “Yes, I do,” the Loot star replied, getting one of the biggest laughs of the skit from the Studio 8H crowd.
Coming at the tail end of a week thick in some of the worse and most cringe worthy events of an extremely uncommon election, tonight’s SNL had Beetlejuice franchise star Michael Keaton back as host for the fourth time — start measuring that Five-Timers jacket. Sticking with symmetry, former one-time host Billie Ellish will be the musical guest on SNL for the fourth time too.
In what has been a pretty strong series of cold opens over the first month of SNL’s 50th season this election year so far, tonight had an exceptionally fine wine cellar of satire to savior for its fourth episode of the current run.
Besides Baier’s interview with Harris, which saw the Veep calling out the FNC anchor in real life for constantly interrupting her and presenting a false picture of Trump’s fascist “enemy within” threats of recent weeks, there was the self-pitying Baier admitting a day later that in fact the wrong clip of the ex-POTUS had been shown on-air. Something that tonight’s cold open heated up with, drawing from the actual interview transcript on both the FNC pratfall and Baier’s questioning of Joe Biden’s mental facilities.
In fact, Dana Carvey was back as the 46th POTUS for yet another non sequitur packed stint.
Even with that on offer, there was always the gift of Trump himself as the former Celebrity Apprentice host weaves between the Totalitarian 101 playbook and sheer nuttiness. Today found Trump in the battleground state of Pennsylvania once again. Unlike previous visits, the candidate rambled on and on about Arnold Palmer genitalia size at his rally in the now deceased golf legend’s hometown of Latrobe in the Keystone State. “When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump told the crowd in what his aides said would be the beginning of his closing argument part of the campaign.
After an October 16 Univision town hall that went from bad to worse and then even worse, technical difficulties saw Trump’s mic go dead at a Detroit rally on October 18 and the convicted felon spent 20 minutes just wandering around the stage as MAGA fans started to leave the venue. Also, while Trump supposedly canceled CBS and NBC interviews, the self-declared exhausted candidate had time to return to his former safe space of Fox & Friends on Friday. Trump being Trump, his time on the sofa with Steve Doocy and the other co-hosts was full of grievances. Trump asked for the Rupert Murdoch channel to stop airing negative ads against him or having mildly progressive pundits on until after Election Day. Then, saying the quiet thing way too out loud, 78-year-old Trump bragged to the friendly Friends hosts that he was going to be meeting with 93-year-old Murdoch himself right after the on-air appearance.
Still, until Palmer’s organs became a topic on the campaign trail, nothing the past week had the comedic appeal of Trump’s October 14 Oaks, PA town hall with sycophantic South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem where the former president pulled the plug on the softball questioning to spend 39-minutes dancing and air conducting to the tunes of his MAGA playlist. The overtly odd occurrence came after there were back-to-back medical emergencies among the audiences. Suddenly Trump proclaimed: “Let’s just listen to music …Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
That October 14 mess made a short appearance on SNL tonight with James Austin Johnson back in the Trump role that Baldwin once owned.
No wonder this past week and today in Georgia has seen Harris calling Trump even more “unstable” than usual, and mocking his pleas of exhaustion in certain interviews. No wonder Trump’s team are trying to get Nikki Haley to join him on the campaign trail in these final days.
Off after tonight for a couple of weeks, SNL will undoubtedly have just as rich pickings out of this close and crazy race when it returns on November 2. Former SNL writer John Mulaney will be back then for his sixth time as host, with chart topper and sometimes politically refreshing wildcard Chappel Roan as musical guest.
No word yet if the VP or running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be adding a SNL cameo to their wide ranging media blitz, but there is still a little bit of time on the schedule. As for Trump, who hosted in the show during 2015 to much criticism from cast members and all most everyone, and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance …not quite sure SNL is really on their dance card this time round.
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