December 16, 2018

Trump Threatens to Sue “Saturday Night Live” Over “It’s a Wonderful Life” Parody

He’s not laughing.

Jim Loscalzo/CNP/ZUMA Wire

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President Donald Trump rekindled his war against Saturday Night Live on Sunday morning, seemingly threatening to sue the show after it aired a segment imagining an alternative universe in which he was never elected. The “real scandal,” Trump insisted in a tweet, is the “one sided coverage of NBC & Democratic spin machines like Saturday Night Live.” He added, “Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal?”

The sketch was a parody of holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life, featuring key figures from in and outside the administration gloating about how much better their lives are without a Trump presidency. Michael Cohen (played by Ben Stiller) isn’t going to prison. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is making a killing in PR. Kellyanne Conway is on speaking terms with her husband. Even Brett Kavanaugh (Matt Damon) gloats about how he’s free to talk about beer without coming off as physically threatening. And then there’s Robert Mueller (Robert DeNiro), who gets to spend more time with his grandson instead of “investigating the president for treason.”

Trump is notoriously sensitive, litigious, and hostile toward the media. But after a week in which his personal attorney and fixer was sentenced to three years in prison for acting on his orders to pay women hush money during the 2016 election, he’s probably in no mood to laugh.

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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