Hillary Clinton appeared on “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday, and used it as an opportunity to mock Donald Trump and to make fun of her own reticence on issues like marriage equality and the Keystone XL pipeline.
In a standard “SNL” setup, the show’s fake Clinton, played by Kate McKinnon, came face to face with the real thing. The former secretary of state and front-runner in the Democratic presidential race played a wise and straight-talking bartender named Val, who counsels McKinnon’s Clinton over vodka, sings a few bars of “Lean on Me,” and then disappears into thin air.
In the sketch, Clinton briefly impersonates Donald Trump — “Uh, you’re all losers” — and joins in with the skewering of her own reputation for overt ambition and robotic campaigning.
“You give off such a young, cool vibe,” Val says to McKinnon’s Clinton. “You must work in Brooklyn.”
It was one of several references to Clinton’s efforts to appeal to younger voters and to counter her public image as removed and emotionally uninspiring. “You are really easy to talk to,” McKinnon’s Clinton tells Val. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that,” Clinton replies.
The most pointed moments, however, came when Clinton conceded that she should have publicly supported marriage equality earlier than she did. “You supported it pretty soon,” says Val. “Still, could have been sooner,” McKinnon’s Clinton responds. “Fair point,” nods the real Clinton.
Clinton endorsed same-sex marriage in March 2013, echoing her watershed speech at the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995: “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” she said in a video she made as secretary of state.
Before filming the sketch last night, Clinton addressed the board of the LGBT rights group the Human Rights Campaign, pledging to make LGBT rights a central issue in her administration, if elected. “I’m running for president to stand up for the fundamental rights of LGBT Americans,” she said at the HRC’s annual gathering Saturday.
In the sketch, Clinton also defends how long she took to come out against the Keystone XL pipeline, saying, as Val, “nothing wrong with taking your time — what’s important is getting it right.” Clinton broke her silence on the issue and announced her opposition to the controversial project only a few weeks ago.
On “Fox and Friends” on Sunday morning, Trump was asked about Clinton’s impersonation of him. He said that he enjoyed it, but that Clinton’s hair — for decades a topic of political chatter and analysis — was “terrible.”
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