SNL resorts to cheap joke about Putin and Trump’s sexuality and we’re so very, very tired of it all
Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, Jimmy Kimmel as Emmanuel Macron. (SNL)
Saturday Night Live (SNL) sent up Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron’s Mean Girls moment at the NATO conference, but fell flat by resorting too cheap, homophobic jokes about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Leaked video footage from last week’s London NATO conference revealed Trump to be the Gretchen Weiners of global politics, when Trudeau, Macron and Boris Johnson were caught gossiping about him with Princess Anne (seriously, it writes itself) at a Buckingham Palace reception.
A hot mic picked up Trudeau joking that Trump’s hair is so big because it’s full of collusion – or was it that he was late to an event because he “takes a 40-minute press conference off the top”?
Either way, SNL saw fit to send up the exchange, showing us “what happened in the NATO cafeteria”.
The sketch casts Trudeau (Jimmy Fallon), Macron (Paul Rudd) and Johnson (James Corden) as the cool kids in a high school cafeteria, bumping Trump (Alec Baldwin) to the “loser’s table” with Latvian president Egils Levits.
Angela Merkel, played by lesbian comic Kate McKinnon, is invited to sit with the three men.
“Hey Angela, you know who might be coming to our party? Obama,” says Trudeau, with Macron suggesting that she has a crush on the former president.
“Hey Donald, I heard someone likes you too, adds Trudeau. “Putin.”
The skit ends with a fourth-wall break by Melania Trump, revealing the whole thing to be a public service announcement against bullying.
The fact that gay jokes are a common form of bullying was apparently lost on writers.
SNL keeps making gay jokes about Trump and Putin.
Since Trump’s election campaign, SNL has made jokes about his relationship with Putin a common theme.
In November 2016, a week before the election, the long-running series aired a scene in which Trump kissed Putin on the lips.
Since then the homophobic humour has come thick and fast, with a 2018 sketch portraying the world leaders as lovers in a hotel room.
While the political relationship between the two men has been the subject of intense speculation, there is no suggestion by any reputable source that they have a sexual connection.
To suggest that there is, as a manner of insulting them, is tired and thoroughly embarrassing for all involved.
