This weekend’s Saturday Night Live featured a long segment about the impeachment hearings in the “Weekend Update.” After recapping the hearings, Michael Che joked that wouldn’t mind if Trump were impeached or received jail time — even if he was innocent.
“Can I be honest? I don’t think I care if Donald Trump is actually guilty. I just want something to happen to him,” Che said. “Okay, hypothetically, if you found out for a fact that Donald Trump was actually innocent but they were sending him to jail anyway, would you mind? See, I wouldn’t mind. Is that fair?”
It obviously is not fair at all, and that’s part of the joke. Che and SNL‘s audience have such an animus against Trump, they don’t care if the president broke any laws or committed “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors” — the grounds for impeachment, according to the Constitution. They just want him to be punished, whether that involves impeachment, removal, or prison.
Michael Che was clearly making a joke, but the entire gag revolves around the fact that so many Americans hate Trump so much, they would want to punish him even if he is innocent.
Last week, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) laid out a more plausible explanation for Trump’s involvement with Ukraine than the Democrats’ suggestion of “bribery” or a quid pro quo. That still didn’t stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from saying that the president’s actions were “so much worse than even what Richard Nixon did.”
The president has many drawbacks. He’s brash, he has a checkered moral past, he shoots off mean tweets. There are a few serious reasons to dislike him. But Michael Che captured something important about the anti-Trump hatred in vogue on the left: it has long since devolved into derangement.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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