Donald Trump Claims His Imminent SNL Hosting Gig Was Originally Just Going To Be A Sketch

Well, it looks like the petition didn't work, and Donald Trump still is going to host Saturday Night Live this weekend, siiiiiiigh. And in typical Trump style, he's already trolling his detractors. Are you, like me, pissed that NBC is giving him the better part of an hour-and-a-half-long programming block to try to ingratiate himself to viewers/voters? Well, according to Trump's comments in an interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN's New Day this morning, it was only supposed to be a few minutes, but after Trump agreed to do one sketch, SNL EP Lorne Michaels upped the ask to hosting a whole episode. Cuomo, referring to Trump's having been fired from The Apprentice by NBC due to his racist comments about Mexicans, noted that the gig is a surprise given that Trump has been "at war" with the network, to which Trump replied, "You're never at war when you get great ratings with a network." Baaaaaaaaarf and yet...he's right, obviously? In fact, there was more than one example in last night's TV of objectionable politics being portrayed for the sake of a good storyline.

On iZombie, Eve Batey took issue with a positive portrayal of a police officer beating a suspect -- a physically abusive father, but still: "I get it, torture and police brutality are hallmarks of scripted entertainment (for better or worse), but it's still troubling to me. If we're expected to be psyched about a cop beating a suspect at 9 PM, does that make us numb to it when it happens again on the 11 PM news?"

In the next hour on fyi, Arranged tried to smooth over the issues in the (non-legal) marriage of two unworldly teenagers: oppressively subjugated Maria had finally gotten so sick of her husband Christian's shit that she fled in the night to her parents' house, but now she's back, so yay? "Christian's turned over a new leaf! Happy wife, happy life! Just like the last new leaf he turned over! Maria's life is still going to be terrible forever!" Score one for Gypsy culture as this show portrays it. (Siiiiiiigh.)

ANYWAY, I admit I'm part of the problem because I'm still going to watch Arranged, and I'm still going to watch SNL this weekend, even if Trump is far from the best-qualified entertainer ever to take to SNL to share his thoughts on government policy.