Saturday Night Live throws cold water on impeachment

SNL’s ritual cold open is often the most talked about skit of the hour-long show. Historically, it employs the most celebrity firepower for short cameos, and in the Trump era, the cold open has become a living ode to the “Russia collusion” scandal. In the debut episode, nothing really changed as far as Alec Baldwin’s exaggerated performance or the conspiratorial tone of the bit.

What came later on in the show was more telling. Aidy Bryant, Kenan Thompson, Cecily Strong, and guest Woody Harrelson led a skit called “Inside the Beltway” that stole the show with a brutal mockery of political punditry.

The host, played by Bryant, sets the table for discussion with news of the impeachment inquiry against Trump. Harrelson contends “this feels like a real turning point in the Trump presidency,” and Strong offers relief that checks and balances are “finally” working. Then comes Thompson as Quincy Maddox, an African American studies academic who blows off the entire panel, saying “ain’t nothing gonna happen.”

The panel’s groupthink is immediately disrupted. Thompson gives no ground on the wishful thinking of his fellow panelists who, it’s worth noting, are all white, liberal journalists. Their confidence that this scandal is unique or somehow different from past scandals doesn’t dissuade Thompson, whose pessimism is reminiscent of a deft Dave Chappelle skit on SNL right after the 2016 election.

The implication is, of course, that these white liberals operate in a fantasyland as it pertains to American political demographics and thus the outcomes of its government. Flashbacks to prior Trump scandals covered by “Inside the Beltway” panelists look all too familiar if you follow Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes in their explainer style of know-nothing political punditry. Even the leftist “Young Turks” host Jimmy Dore has called out the liberal media’s uniform obsession with ending the Trump presidency by way of their indignant reporting.

These talk shows largely reward conventional thinking, neat talking points, and an adherence to the punditocracy’s assumption that Trump is politically toxic. This is where Thompson breaks with orthodoxy to cause an uproar.

It’s not that Thompson accepts Trump’s repeated misconduct as good or morally acceptable; in fact, he nods along with the panel in condemnation of the president’s behavior. What sets him apart is that he knows the country “Inside the Beltway” is covering better than his broken record colleagues do and that the scandals aren’t actually going to have the political consequences his liberal co-panelists always expect.

In and of itself, Thompson’s and Chappelle’s position is an overt critique of American exceptionalism, but it’s a useful one. Pundits are an insular class who more often express how the world should be, instead of how it is. This is entirely backwards: For political predictions, nothing could be more useful to viewers than sober realism.

The skit descends into a genuine laughing fit by Bryant after a wardrobe malfunction and dialogue channeling President Barack Obama’s famous line about the “arc of the moral universe being long and bending towards justice.” In this moment, you see just how out of touch both the actors on SNL and the media they’re portraying have been in regards to Trump. Everyone but Thompson that is, ending the skit with “he gonna win again.” The contrarian wins the day.

Political punditry is part performance and part knowledge, but in many cases, it has become the performance of possessing knowledge. Just ask MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, whose infamous Russia “scoop” quickly collapsed. Most of Trump’s voters have always understood this about the pundit class. It finally appears the cast of Saturday Night Live might as well.

Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesman for Young Voices, host of the Beltway Banthas podcast, and an entertainment contributor for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.