It only took until the third episode of “Saturday Night Live’s” 44th season for Alex Baldwin to slip back into a suit, red tie and Donald Trump combover wig.
The Emmy winning actor and new talk show host appeared in the cold open sketch, which focused on Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Kanye West (played here by Chris Redd) and Jim Brown (played by Kenan Thompson).
Baldwin as Trump welcomed West to the office, thanking him for giving him a pair of his sneakers (“They’re perfect for me because they’re white, they’re wide and they’re never going to be worth as much as you say they are,” Baldwin’s Trump said) and allowing him to make “one or two brief, lucid remarks.”
Redd as West began by starting that “time is a myth” and he is “a prisoner in a different dimension.” From there he launched into his belief that “the 13th amendment is a trapdoor…and why would you install a trapdoor when you could end up with the Unabomber?”
As he ranted, Baldwin’s Trump realized “this guy might be cuckoo,” noting that he’s been in a room with both Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, and they “made a lot more sense” than West.
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“He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t listen to anyone but himself. Who does he remind me of?” Baldwin’s Trump thought.
West followed that with borrowing lines from Trump himself, saying he is a “stable genius” and “has a big brain and the best words.”
“Oh my God, he’s black me,” Baldwin’s Trump said.
Thompson also got a chance to explore Brown’s inner monologue through voiceover in the sketch, wondering, among other things, if it was possible for a person to be “tri-polar.”
“The only thing I want to point out is mental health in the black community is apparently an even bigger issue than I thought,” he said. “I’ve been on coalitions with Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson, and this is the first time I have regrets.”
There were some aspects of West that made Trump feel “better,” though, specifically the fact that he uses six zeroes as his phone passcode, while Baldwin’s Trump said he uses “80085 — boobs.”
“I love you, Kanye. We’ve got a lot more in common than people know: We’re both geniuses; we’re both married to beautiful women; and we’ve both definitely been recorded saying the n-word,” Baldwin’s Trump closed the sketch.
Watch the Oct. 13 cold open below:
“Saturday Night Live” airs live coast-to-coast Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET / 8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.