‘SNL’ Cold Open: Alec Baldwin’s Trump Offers Piano Rendition of ‘Macho Man’

Chris Lindahl
·2 min read
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When “Saturday Night Live” took a break from comedy following the 2016 election to have Kate McKinnon’s Hillary Clinton perform a piano rendition of “Hallelujah,” the reaction was divisive — the cold open was either saccharine or a moving tribute. On Saturday, “SNL” showed it was willing to poke fun at itself when Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump sat down in front of a piano in response to the election being called for Joe Biden.

Saturday’s cold open, performed about 12 hours after Biden was declared president-elect, assembled a cast of characters that had become all too familiar during this election week. There was a perpetually awake Wolf Blitzer, played by Beck Bennett, and Alex Moffat’s John King, whose fingers had been reduced to nubs thanks to 85-straight hours of operating CNN’s touchscreen electoral map.

And Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph, as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, offered their version of the real-life victory speech that occurred just hours before.

“We kept edging closer and closer, it was like having sex with Sting — but what a release, man!” Carrey said in a recap of a drawn-out election night that he likened to the musician’s tantric sex practices. “I’ve never felt so alive, which is ironic because I’m not that alive.”

With a white pantsuit and silk scarf, Rudolph was dressed in a pitch-perfect recreation of the outfit that the real-life Harris wore during her Wilmington, Delaware victory speech earlier that night.

But things took a fantastical turn when Bennett’s Blitzer offered to cut to Trump’s concession speech, something that has not happened yet.

Baldwin’s Trump framed it as a “victory speech,” vowing to “fight this thing to the bitter end.”

That’s when he got behind a piano to break into a downtempo rendition of “Macho Man.”

“This isn’t goodbye, America. I’m just going to say ‘See you in court,'” Baldwin said after finishing his tune.

The song, originally performed by the very gay Village People, was an unwittingly ironic fixture at Trump’s rallies. Anderson Cooper gave us one of the more memorable TV moments of the election cycle in October when he tried to hold back his laughter as the song blared during a live shot from a Trump event.

This was the second time “SNL” had Baldwin at a piano. For the Season 42 finale in 2017, Trump and his inner circle gathered to sing “Hallelujah” in a nod to McKinnon’s earlier performance.

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