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Donald Trump’s White House showered Saturday Night Live with love Thursday morning; NBC’s politically charged late night show nabbed the most Emmy noms – 22 – bringing its already record tally to a new high: 231.
In what’s sure to be a rare instance of modesty, Trump likely will decline to take the credit.
Top of the list of Trump gifts to SNL: Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy both received Emmy nominations this morning for their White House portraits – Baldwin for his pouty-mouthed POTUS and McCarthy for her routine as Unhinged Spicey, aka White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Among the show’s 22 noms, Kate McKinnon once again got a nod in the Comedy Supporting Actress category, which the Hillary Clinton doppelganger won last year.
Baldwin is nommed for Best Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series – having appeared on SNL as Trump too many times to compete in the guest derby – while McCarthy is nommed for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Even before this morning’s noms were unveiled, Baldwin was being discussed as a frontrunner for the win in Best Comedy Supporting Actor derby for his spot-on parody of President Trump, which got showered with rave reviews – with one notable exception. “Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad,” tweeted Trump, who, early in Baldwin’s run in the role, panned virtually every appearance on Twitter.
Baldwin’s Trump became the gold standard by which other Trump impersonations were judged. But, no doubt to Trump’s dismay, Baldwin became the standard by which media began judging Trump’s own performances. In February, Trump’s see-it-to-believe-it presser had Josh Gad advising Baldwin to look for another gig because he’d been outpeformed by Trump, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declaring Baldwin had a competitor after Trump tweeted that he’d been wiretapped by President Obama. “We saw him today in the White House East Room…doing a better job of playing Trump at his most ridiculous, than the actor himself can.”
McCarthy, meanwhile, surprised Saturday Night Live fans with a cameo appearance as Spicey, then hosted in May, marking her fifth time hosting SNL.
Her performance so rattled the White House, it began to pull Spicer from his role as question-taker at press briefings with Sarah Huckabee Sanders often filling in. Then, the White House went even further and began to not televise its the briefings, lest SNL cast someone in the Sanders role.
Though Trump bashed Baldwin’s performance, Spicer tried to shrug off McCarthy’s hysterically unhinged “Spicey” routine, though his stab at good sportsmanship got lost when, in one of his many playing-to-an-audience-of-one moments, he noted SNL had “gone from being funny to just bad. Those aren’t jokes. They’re inappropriate…I think for a lot of people, regardless of your political persuasion, that’s not what you’re tuning in for.”
He was, of course, wrong. And the Saturday late-night show this past season enjoyed its biggest crowds in 23 years.
Mcarthy had been nommed for all four previous hosting gigs. Having never missed in this category – nommed in 2012, ’13, ’14 and ’16 – she was considered a virtual done deal for a nom this morning. In total, McCarthy has seven Emmy nominations to her credit, also include three for her work on CBS sitcom Mike and Molly (and a win in ’11).
