Trump Reportedly Wanted To Sic DOJ Lawyers On SNL To Make The Show Stop Teasing Him

He has such thin skin.


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576 points

Update: The twice-impeached one-term president has denied this report in a bonkers statement released on Tuesday, calling it “fake news.”

“The story that I asked the Department of Justice to go after ratings-challenged (without Trump!) Saturday Night Live, and other late-night Losers, is total Fake News,” Trump wrote. “It was fabricated, there were no sources, and yet the Lamestream Media goes with it.”

However, Trump did suggest that the show should be “illegal.”

You can read the original story below:

Conservatives try to paint Donald Trump as some sort of alpha-male, but the former president actually has the thinnest skin in politics. Trump is known for hate-watching Saturday Night Live, and in 2018, he tweeted that “SNL” amounted to “nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials,” and wondered if it “should be tested in courts, can’t be legal?” Trump repeatedly demeaned actor Alec Baldwin over his portrayal of the former president. According to The Daily Beast, the show got so under the twice-impeached one-term president’s skin that he went as far as to ask the federal government to stop them from teasing him.

In March 2019, according to the report, Trump tweeted, “It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side. Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows. Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this?”

Trump was serious.

“It was, on its face, a ridiculous question and threat, as SNL is obviously satire, and therefore a form of protected speech in America that pissed-off commanders-in-chief have no authority to directly subvert. However, then-President Trump went farther than simply tweeting his displeasure with the late-night comedians and SNL writers’ room,” the outlet reports. “The internal discussions that followed, between the former leader of the free world and some of his political and legal advisers, once again underscored just how much Trump wanted to use the full weight and power of the U.S. government to punish his personal enemies.”

“According to two people familiar with the matter, Trump had asked advisers and lawyers in early 2019 about what the Federal Communications Commission, the courts systems, and—most confusingly to some Trump lieutenants—the Department of Justice could do to probe or mitigate SNL, Jimmy Kimmel, and other late-night comedy mischief-makers,” the report continues.

For those at the receiving end of Trump’s inquiries, they looked at it as simply a “nuisance.”

“To those who heard it, Trump’s inquiries into what federal regulations could be used to bust the likes of Kimmel and SNL was more of a nuisance than a constitutional crisis. “It was more annoying than alarming, to be honest with you,” one of these sources recalled.,” the report continues. “However, the conversations further showed, in the pettiest of ways, how the 45th U.S. president was keen on turning the country’s top law enforcers into something more akin to his own personally retained law firm.”

“In early 2019, Trump had to be repeatedly advised that the “equal-time” rules to which he appeared to refer wouldn’t even apply in this situation, given that late-night shows and NBC sketch comedy are clearly staged satire, and thus not bound by the same requirements of other forms of broadcast TV and radio,” the outlet reports.

Trump wasn’t very happy about that.

“Can something else be done about it?” Trump replied, only to be told a version of “I’ll look into it.” The report adds, ‘This person says that to this day, they have not, in fact, “looked into it.”’

Narcissists can’t handle even the smallest bit of criticism, so it’s not surprising that Trump let a satirical show get under his fragile skin.

You can read the full report here.

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