For weeks, "Saturday Night Live" has been lampooning Donald Trump, and for weeks Trump has been reacting with bad reviews.
"Unwatchable!" he tweeted after this week's episode, which had just mocked his habit of tweeting. The president-elect saved particular ire for Alec Baldwin's Trump impression, which "just can't get any worse."
But the newly minted the Time Person of the Year wouldn't answer Matt Lauer's questions on whether it would probably be better for him to just stop watching.
Trump avoided the question a couple of times in a "Today" show interview early Wednesday, instead bashing the satirical sketch show and Baldwin, who's taken the mantle as late-night TV's impersonator-in-chief.
"I mean Alec, I like Alec, but his imitation of me is really mean-spirited and not very good," Trump said. "I don't think that his imitation of me gets me at all, and it's meant to be very mean-spirited which is very biased and I don't like it so I can tweet that out."
Trump has been tweeting his feelings about "SNL" since Baldwin started playing the real estate magnate this season, aping the way he walks, talks and holds himself in re-enactments of presidential debates and more. While Trump called an episode that made fun of his appearance in an October debate a boring "hit job," Baldwin has helped the show to its best ratings in nearly a decade.
Trump hosted the show just a year ago — prompting protests outside Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, where it's filmed — and Trump told Lauer the show was good back then.
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Not so much anymore. "There's nothing funny about it, the skits are terrible," he said.
Trump didn't answer when Lauer asked, "So why do you keep watching it?"
Baldwin hasn't responded to the interview yet, but he has suggested a way for Trump to get the impressions to stop. He just has to release his tax returns, Baldwin tweeted in reply to Trump's "SNL" criticism Sunday morning.
"Saturday Night Live" and this station are both owned by NBCUniversal.
