Alec Baldwin is addressing backlash to his performance of Donald Trump in "Saturday Night Live." The NBC late-night sketch on Saturday night played out the reenactment of the recent debate between Trump and Joe Biden. Baldwin returned to play the president before his COVID diagnosis, but was slammed for cracking a joke that touched upon the subject.
"The China Virus has been very mean to me by being a hoax, and that statement will not come back to haunt me later this week," he said, according to the U.K.'s Independent.
Many felt the remark was insensitive to Trump's recent diagnosis.
Taking to social media, Baldwin defended himself from his critics.
"If there was ever the suggestion that Trump was truly, gravely ill, and people said, 'Trump is really in trouble,' then I would bet you everything I have that we wouldn't even get near that, in terms of content of the show. They would have done something else. I've seen that happen before," Baldwin said in an Instagram video on Sunday.
Baldwin shared that he thought Trump would "be back soon."
"We only have the words of the White House itself and the people who work there themselves to go on, and all of them have all been saying he isn’t in any danger," he continued. "We only have their word to go by. And if their word was that he was in serious trouble, then we probably wouldn't have done it."
Baldwin added: "We thought the debate was something topical, and we didn't have anything with him in a hospital bed, but we had the debate. You'd have to have a very good reason to avoid that, topicality-wise, and nobody thought that they were mocking somebody's illness by doing that."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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