SNL returned to its live iteration over the weekend, kicking off the new season with a cold open satirizing the first (and maybe only????) presidential debate of 2020, featuring Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump and the debut of Jim Carrey’s Joe Biden. But the episode aired during a tumultuous time for this great nation, as countless citizens have taken to Twitter to either celebrate or chastise others for celebrating the hospitalization of Donald Trump following his COVID-19 diagnosis. The former reality show host and alleged rapist has taken up residence in Walter Reed to receive treatment for a virus he has egregiously referred to as both a “hoax” and “the China virus”—quotes that were aptly mocked by Baldwin’s Trump during the SNL cold open. Some people (who? WHO?) think it’s wrong to openly rejoice in Trump’s illness, despite the fact that it is very satisfying to see the bad man experiencing the direct consequences of his willfully irresponsible actions.
Also: It’s funny.
There is no need for SNL to justify its decision to run with a cold open featuring Baldwin’s Trump mocking the minor star of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York for wildly reprehensible and inaccurate comments he actually made that are now darkly hilarious because he has fallen victim to the very thing he dismissed as a hoax and NBD. But just in case you need that, for some reason, here’s Alec Baldwin on his Instagram account explaining why they ran the cold open—and lest you think Baldwin and his pals at SNL are monsters, he would like to assure you that if the public had been told that Trump was “truly, gravely ill,” they would have scrapped the cold open entirely: