It’s been a long election season for everyone, including the writers and actors of Saturday Night Live. This week, the show brought back Alec Baldwin and his Donald Trump impression for one final pre-election fight with Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton in a cold open that took apart the Democratic presidential nominee’s poor week in the polls — and then transitioned into the show voicing its frustration with the vitriol of this year’s campaign season.
The main kernel of the sketch was the week’s big news: the FBI’s announcement that it found more emails that may or may not be relevant to its prior investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and how, in the wake of that announcement, Clinton saw her poll numbers fall in some states.
"This has been a great week," McKinnon’s Clinton told CNN anchor Erin Burnett (played by Cecily Strong). "My favorite part was losing that big huge lead I had."
SNL then highlighted the various scandals, allegations, and controversies that swirled around Trump this week — colluding with the FBI, encouraging Russia to tamper with the election, and being endorsed by the KKK. In one of the sketch’s more shocking moments, Baldwin’s Trump kissed a hooded KKK member on the mouth.
The point: No one, including the media, has really held Trump responsible for the company he keeps and the scandals he’s involved in.
"These emails are very bad for you, Hillary," Baldwin’s Trump said. "That’s why I never, ever use email. It’s too risky. Instead I use a very private, very secure site where one can write whatever they want to and no one will read it. It’s called Twitter."
Strong’s Burnett corrected him, saying everyone can read Trump’s tweets.
"And I’m still in this thing?" Baldwin’s Trump responded, clearly surprised. "America, you must really hate this lady."
As the sketch came to a close, things got really strange. Baldwin and McKinnon both noted how they’re sick and tired of playing Trump and Clinton and having to be so awful to each other, thanks to how exhausting and low the real election got.
"I just feel gross all the time. Don’t you guys feel gross all the time about this?" Baldwin said to the audience, before he and McKinnon locked hands, fled SNL’s studio at Rockefeller Center, and ran to Times Square. (I realize this is a very strange sentence, but that did happen).
After dancing around and eating pretzels, McKinnon and Baldwin come back to the SNL stage and left the audience with one message: to make sure to vote.
"We can't tell you who to vote for, but next Tuesday we get to decide what kind of country we want to live in," McKinnon said, before kicking off the show.
