Alec Baldwin tweets back as Donald Trump talks of 'retribution' for SNL

Donald Trump has savaged Saturday Night Live as a “total Republican hit job” while calling for “retribution” and an investigation of the show after another unflattering portrayal of the president by Alec Baldwin.

The actor responded by questioning whether the president’s words represented “a threat to my safety and that of my family”.

Baldwin reprised his role as Donald Trump with blonde wig, characteristic pout and exaggerated imitation of the president’s speech-making style, for the show’s cold open on Saturday. This time the sketch parodied the president’s press conference in which he announced a national emergency over his plans to build a border wall with Mexico.

“We need wall. We have a tremendous amount of drugs coming in through the southern border, or the ‘brown line’ as many people have asked me not to call it,” said Baldwin.

“You all see why I gotta fake this emergency, right? I have to because I want to. It’s really simple. We have a problem. Drugs are coming into this country through no wall.

“Wall works, wall makes safe. You don’t have to be smart to understand that – in fact it’s even easier to understand if you’re not that smart.”

The president, who has proven very sensitive to the way he is covered in the media, was clearly unimpressed with Baldwin’s characterisation, saying on Twitter there was “nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” The president asked how the networks got away with shows like this “without retribution … very unfair and should be looked into”.

In characteristic capitals, he added: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

Trump’s national emergency declaration is expected to face challenges – a topic also seized on by Baldwin.

“I’ll immediately be sued and the ruling will not go in my favour and then it will end up in the supreme court and then I’ll call my buddy Kavanaugh and I’ll say ‘It’s time to repay the Donny’ and he’ll say, ‘New phone, who dis?’ And by then the Mueller report will be released, crumbling my house of cards and I can plead insanity and do a few months in the puzzle factory and my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.”

Trump’s talk of “retribution” drew criticism, with lawmakers and journalists suggesting the threats violated core democratic principles. The Democrat Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted: “One thing that makes America great is that people can laugh at you without retribution.”

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, said that while such language had become commonplace “it’s worth remembering that no other president in decades publicly threatened ‘retribution’ against a television network because it satirized him”.

The American Civil Liberties Union tweeted a short reminder about free speech: “It’s called the First Amendment.”

Baldwin tweeted later on Sunday, writing: “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?”

Trump has lashed out in the past over Saturday Night Live sketches mocking him and his administration, but has largely refrained from criticising the show in recent months. In October, Trump tweeted his support for Kanye West, who appeared on the show wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

In that tweet Trump reminded readers he once hosted SNL – during the 2016 election, controversially – but said it was “no longer funny, no talent or charm. It is just a political ad for the Dems.”