In a tweet on December 16, Donald Trump questioned the legality of Saturday Night Live's previous episode opener. The show featured a spin on It's a Wonderful Life and pondered what life would be like had Trump not won the presidency. They theorized Melania successfully divorcing Donald, Pence becoming a DJ, and other wild and fun commentaries aimed at current political affairs. Following the episode, Trump angrily accused the show of belittling and defaming him. He went so far as to ask the courts to review the program and determine, presumably, if they could actually do that. As per usual, questions abound regarding his response.
Why didn't he say something when they first started mocking him around the conclusion of his campaign? Surely there were plenty of discrediting and ugly attacks on him, but that's exactly what SNL is lauded for throughout its forty year run. The point of the show is to evoke laughter by offering witty commentary on the socio-political state of our nation through the lens of comedy. Ever since Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd portrayed presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter respectively, SNL has been known to ridicule current presidents and include them into their sketches. Throughout the years, SNL has featured skits involving Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George H. W. Bush.
In fact, Bush Sr. appeared in some sketches alongside actor Dana Carvey and laughed at himself with the show. George Bush was a fan of the sketches aimed at his speech habits and behavioral ticks, and James Andrew Miller, author of Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, writes about how "Bush would laugh at it, so I don't think that was mean in any way." Obama is also cited as being able to laugh at the sketches about him, so a follow-up question certainly arises. Why can't Trump do the same? As far as I can tell, no other president has been this publicly and aggressively concerned about his presidential image, one that he arguably never helps due to his childish Twitter personality. With that said, I can't exactly be too surprised he tweeted his opposition to the show, highlighting his fragile mentality and unstable public image that surely can't be healthy to maintain as a president.
