September 30, 2018

Matt Damon Played Brett Kavanaugh Like an Angry, Entitled, Drunk Frat Boy. And the Internet Ate It Up.

Trump hates SNL—except for when Kanye West shows up.

Last night, Saturday Night Live‘s season premiere recreated this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The skit featured a floating Alyssa Milano cutout; a red-faced, sniffing, raging, water-swilling Matt Damon as Kavanaugh; Kate McKinnon spoofing the fury-filled, finger-pointing Sen. Lindsey Graham; and of course, references to beer.

So much beer. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), played by SNL cast member Alex Moffat, opens the skit with, “We’ve heard from the alleged victim, but now it’s time to hear from the hero, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.” In ambles a sniffing Damon, who sits down at a desk covered in small bottles of water and yells “What?!” (Last year Damon was widely criticized, and later apologized, for insensitive comments following the revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual assault.)

In Saturday’s skit, Aidy Bryant plays Arizona sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. She declares it would be fine if people referred to her as just “prosecutor” instead of “female prosecutor”—a dig at her hiring by the all-male Republican membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee to avoid bad optics while questioning Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Later, Mikey Day’s Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) refers to Mitchell as a “female assistant”—a dig at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s real-life moniker for Mitchell last week—then asks if she would prefer he called her “stewardess.”

SNL cast alum Rachel Dratch played Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), recreating a heated exchange during the actual Kavanaugh hearings in which the senator asked Kavanaugh if he had ever blacked out from drinking, to which he responded defensively with, “Have you?” (Kavanaugh later apologized to Klobuchar.)

The real Klobuchar endorsed Dratch’s performance:

At the end of the show, Kanye West, who had replaced Ariana Grande as the last-minute musical performer, gave a pro-Trump speech wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. He called President Donald Trump a “builder,” and said people backstage told him not to come out in the MAGA hat.

“It’s so many times that I talk to a white person about this and they say, ‘How could you support Trump? He’s racist.’ Well, if I was concerned about racism, I would have moved out of America a long time ago. We don’t just make our decisions off of racism,” West said. “If someone inspires me and I connect with them, I don’t have to believe in all their policies.”

On Sunday, the president tweeted his disapproval of SNL—except for Kanye.

 

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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