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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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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