election exhaustion

Even Pretending to Be Trump Is Upsetting

Photo: Saturday Night Live/NBC/Hulu

The finish line is in sight for this nightmarish marathon of a presidential election, which means Saturday Night Live’s cold opens starring Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon as presidential hopefuls Trump and Clinton will soon draw to a close. It looks like the people most relieved about that will be McKinnon and Baldwin themselves, based on last night’s cold open.

About midway through, after Baldwin/Trump kisses an FBI agent, Putin, and a KKK member on the mouth and Hillary Clinton finally starts to crack, the two actors drop the façade.

“I’m sorry, Kate. I just hate yelling all this stuff at you like this,” Baldwin said.

“This whole election has been so mean!” McKinnon agreed.

“I just feel gross all the time! Don’t you guys feel gross all the time about this?” Baldwin asked the audience, who cheered.

“You know what I think can help us? Let’s get out of here,” McKinnon declared, and the two actors run out of Rockefeller Center hand-in-hand to 42nd street where they hug people and eat pretzels and hand out balloons.

Back on the famous SNL stage, they both urged people to vote. With a slightly cracking voice, McKinnon ended things by saying, “We can’t tell you who to vote for, but on Tuesday, we all get a chance to choose what kind of country we want to live in.”

Even Pretending to Be Trump Is Upsetting