Alec Baldwin was back as Donald Trump on “Saturday Night Live” — on the phone — calling in to “Weekend Update,” and bragging that America is now “number one in the world” for COVID-19 (in cases and deaths).
Besides, “my TV ratings are through the roof, and every night at 7 p.m. all of New York claps and cheers for the great job I’m doing,” he told Colin Jost and Michael Che, who co-hosted the show from their homes on split screen.
“I don’t know if that’s for you, man,” Che says, referring to the city’s nightly thank you to health-care workers.
Baldwin’s Trump insisted that right from the start of cases of coronavirus — which he also referred to as “Covfefe-19” — “I’ve always said it was a giant hoax that we should take very seriously. Everyone needs to wash their hands — or not.” He also warned Americans that all the absentee ballots are “covered in coronavirus.”
Che took a moment to honor his grandmother, who died last Sunday of complications from coronavirus. He told Jost she loved their “Joke Swap” bit, and asked his co-host to read a joke in her memory. After Jost read a particularly embarrassing joke, Che quipped: “My grandmother’s never seen the show. I just wanted you to do that.”
Che signed off as “Martha’s grandbaby.“
Earlier in the week Che told fans in a since-deleted Instagram post that he was “doing OK, considering,” after his grandmother’s death. “I’m obviously very hurt and angry that she had to go through all that pain alone,” he wrote. “But I’m also happy that she’s not in pain anymore.”
Some fans listened in to “Weekend Update” on Zoom, and their uproarious laughter offered a bizarre kind of laugh track to the jokes. But Che said that “telling jokes with nobody just looks like hostage footage.”
Check out Baldwin’s latest shtick in the video up top.
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