Alec Baldwin Goes High as Donald Trump Goes Low in SNL Twitter Battle

With just five days to go until Donald Trump is inaugurated as president of the United States, he is still, unbelievably, complaining about his portrayal on Saturday Night Live.

Using the occasion as an excuse to extend his war on the free press to yet another mainstream media outlet, Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon, “@NBCNews is bad but Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!”

The “hit job” in question this time came the night before, when Alec Baldwin performed a relatively accurate version of Trump’s first press conference as president-elect on SNL’s first sketch of 2017. Like in real life, Baldwin’s Trump addressed directly the unverified accusations that he engaged in “golden showers” parties in Russia, but in SNL’s version he was actually more polite to CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Trump has tweeted against SNL and Baldwin after nearly every single episode in which the actor has appeared, but as the inauguration approaches, it has become increasingly more unnerving and desperate. While he has previously tweeted during the show in the post-midnight hour, this time he waited until late afternoon on Sunday, leading some to imagine that he had perhaps come to realize how silly his outbursts seemed. Nope!

It is also notable that Trump continues to tweet against NBC properties while he remains an executive producer of NBC’s The New Celebrity Apprentice. Following that show’s premiere this month, he tweeted that new host Arnold Schwarzenegger could never measure up to “ratings machine, DJT.”

As for Baldwin, he did not take Trump’s bait directly, but did follow his latest SNL tweet with one of his own about the president-elect’s other big Twitter battle of the weekend with Congressman John Lewis. After Lewis said he does not view Trump as a “legitimate president,” Trump fired back in a series of tweets that accused the Civil Rights icon of being “All talk, talk, talk - no action or results.”

“When African Americans felt abused/neglected, they turned to ppl like John Lewis, Julian Bond and MLK for leadership,” Baldwin tweeted. “MCW’s chose Trump…” he added, in an apparent reference to “middle-class whites.”

Speaking to Katie Couric in an interview earlier this week, Baldwin warned against simply “whining” and “lampooning” Trump and instead called on those who oppose him to take real action. Those comments, in response to Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech, had more than a hint of irony coming from a man who parodies Trump on a weekly basis.

While Baldwin said he believes it’s time for people to “move on” and accept reality, that’s not so easy to do when the man who’s about to be president can’t stop “whining” about you on Twitter. With his latest comments, Baldwin is signaling that he might not think Trump is all that “legitimate” either.