"Saturday Night Live" mocks Donald Trump for being ridiculed at NATO

A new SNL sketch depicts Donald Trump as being both unpopular and bullied by other NATO country leaders

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 8, 2019 12:00PM (EST)

Alec Baldwin as President Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC/Will Heath)
Alec Baldwin as President Donald Trump on "Saturday Night Live" (NBC/Will Heath)

A new "Saturday Night Live" sketch mocks President Donald Trump by parodying a recent incident in which world leaders at a NATO summit in Buckingham Palace were overheard ridiculing the president behind his back.

The sketch began by mentioning that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been overheard making fun of Trump during a NATO summit while none of them seemed to be aware that a microphone was picking up their conversation. After saying "you should have seen what happened in the NATO cafeteria," the sketch shows Trudeau (Jimmy Fallon), Macron (Paul Rudd) and Johnson (James Corden) sitting at a cafeteria table and refusing to allow the unpopular Trump (Alec Baldwin) to join them.

"Did you see him speak for 45 minutes the other day? It was just supposed to be for a photo," Rudd's Macron asks Corden's Johnson and Fallon's Trudeau after Baldwin's Trump arrives.

"Well if I looked like him I'd try to distract the photographer too," Fallon's Trudeau says. After Baldwin's Trump asks to sit at their table, they turn him down as Rudd's Macron explains, "Yes, we would love to see you talk and chew at the same time, but we promised this seat to a friend."

After Baldwin's Trump asks Corden's Johnson if they are still friends, Corden's Johnson averts his eyes and says, "Don't make this harder than it already is, old bean. I'm hanging out with these guys now." After Baldwin's Trump is forced to sit at the same table as Latvia's representative, who talks about getting a wolverine drunk on schnapps, he exclaims in horror, "Oh my god, I'm at the losers' table!" After he again asks to sit with the cool kids, they tell him that his seat is reserved for German Chancellor Angela Merkel (Kate McKinnon), who is thrilled to be invited to join the in-crowd. The sketch culminates with Corden's Johnson taping a sign that says "Impeach Me!!!" on the back of Baldwin's Trump.

In real life, Trudeau was captured on camera and audio on Tuesday evening at a Buckingham Palace reception making fun of Trump's press conferences from earlier in the day during a conversation with Macron, Johnson and others. After Johnson asked why an unspecified "you" was late, Trudeau said that "he was late because he takes a 40 minute press conference off the top." After Macron replied inaudibly, Trudeau continued that he "just watched his team's jaws drop to the floor."

On Wednesday Trump denounced Trudeau's remarks, saying during a press conference alongside Merkel that the Canadian prime minister is "two-faced" and that "he's a nice guy, but the truth is I called him out on the fact he's not paying 2 percent (in military spending) and I guess he's not happy about it." Laura Ingraham of Fox News characterized the international mockery as favorable for the president, tweeting on Tuesday that "this is great news for Trump. Foreign leaders have been laughing at Republican presidents since Reagan. Media elites as usual miss America."

Trudeau later confirmed that he was referring to the president in his remarks to Macron and Johnson. It is not the first time that world leaders have been caught insulting their peers when they thought the public could not overhear them, according to The Washington Post. In 1971 President Richard Nixon was overheard referring to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Justin's father) as a "pompous egghead"; in 1988 French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac asked of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "What more does this housewife want from me? My balls on a plate?"; and in 2011 French President Nicolas Sarkozy was overheard telling President Barack Obama that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a "liar," prompting Obama to reply that he has had to "deal with him even more often than you."


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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