Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:38 pm
CNN’s Brian Stelter and company had a chat this morning about Donald Trump’s unhinged tweeting in response to a Saturday Night Live skit about his unhinged tweeting. The question posed was, “Does the president-elect have to get a thicker skin?”
Exhibit A is Trump’s response to the SNL skit:
Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016
Looking at the evidence it is difficult to disagree with the answer from CNN analyst and author Bill Carter: “I think he needs A skin. he doesn’t even seem to have a skin it’s so thin.”
Re: Trump's SNL complaints: "Does the prez elect have to get a thicker skin?" @WJCarter: "I think he needs A skin!" https://t.co/5hQ9MLCMLg
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 5, 2016
Carter went on to say,
“If he thinks this is bad now when he is in office it’s going to be all over the place, every comedian, everyone. SNL has done this to everybody. That’s what they’re in the business of doing. This guy’s hosted the show. He knows what it’s about. It’s fascinating to see they stopped to say ‘he really did this,’ it wasn’t even satire.”
Donald Trump did host SNL, and it was a disaster. He also accused SNL of rigging the election for Hillary Clinton, said the show needed to be canceled, and demanded equal time to respond.
As Carter has said previously, no president is immune from satire and it’s often vicious. Trump is hardly the first to be subjected to satire, and Carter holds out the example of Abraham Lincoln, objectively a far better man than Trump.
Yet here we have a president-elect spending a disproportionate amount of time reacting to perceived slights. It is remarkable. And as an example of just how fragile his ego is, it is frightening.
It is fun to laugh at Trump, and he makes it so easy. But liberals and progressives must never let poking fun at Trump’s unhinged behavior get in the way of our understanding just how dangerous his attacks on the First Amendment are.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.