Alec Baldwin sure knows a thing or two about the feeling of being threatened. He’s seen it multiple times, both in the eyes of the man he punched in a parking squabble, and in the fearful faces of the paparazzi he’s been recorded bellowing at. But now Baldwin expects the world to believe he’s the snowflake after Donald Trump criticized his Trump impression on SNL, wondering whether the “retribution” Trump seeks for character assassination means harming Baldwin or “his family.”
After a particularly hateful evening of Saturday Night Live, complete with Baldwin reprising his terrible Trump impersonation to mock the border wall, guest host Don Cheadle blasting Trump and conservatives at every turn, and musical guest Gary Clark Jr. debuting songs attacking “Trump Country,” President Trump tweeted his critique:
“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution?”
Honestly that seems like a fair enough question considering SNL is anything but an equal opportunity mocker. It’s no question that all of Hollywood’s hate for Trump is often focused through an SNL broadcast, and POTUS has never been shy about defending himself on Twitter..
But of course tough guy Alec Baldwin believes he can dish out as much as he would like without getting any flak in return, and — because he probably didn’t have anything substantial to say defending himself — produced a whimpering little tweet about fearing for his safety in light of the President’s tweet.
On Sunday January 17, Baldwin tweeted back, “I wonder if a sitting President exhorting his followers that my role in a TV comedy qualifies me as an enemy of the people constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?” Geez, talk about definition of a crybully. But you know, in liberal Hollywood it pays to be a victim. And even for Baldwin who has a history of violent confrontation, his friends in the media are oh so willing to see him as the defenseless one because in this situation it’s politically expedient.
Deadline.com sympathized with Baldwin, calling the president’s tweets “a new low,” while New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker lamented that “no other president in decades publicly threatened ‘retribution’ against a television network because it satirized him.” Sounds scary, right? No, it’s just how they have to spin it in order to justify their constant stream of hate.
This is like something out of the Jim Acosta playbook, where you can be as big as much of a liberal loudmouth as possible, then unleash weaselly rhetoric about how getting kicked out of the White House is proof that democracy is dying in darkness. The truth is, if SNL were to completely fall apart — I’m sure no one would miss it — they would only have themselves to blame.
