The reason President-elect Donald Trump refused to participate in a “Saturday Night Live” skit when he hosted the show in 2015 has finally been revealed.
Trump had to wear a tree costume and “stand next to the Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein’s character who gives and gives of herself until she is reduced to a tree stump.” Susan Morrison of the New Yorker wrote in a profile from “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels that was published Monday.
Trump would have ended the bit where he mocked the Giving Tree as “a loser,” Morrison said.
But the then-presidential hopeful ignored the segment “not because it portrayed him as heartless, but because he was afraid the tree costume would make him look fat,” she explained. in one long piece about Michaels, the show’s 50 years and the way the weekly program comes together.
Trump hosted the show in November 2015, a year before he defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
In his monologue above, he bombastically declared that his look would be “something special,” teased his “many people sneak kick” and took aim at Rosie O’Donnell, with whom he has had a years-long feud. Trump too mocked then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and danced to Drake’s “Hotline Bling.”
During Trump’s 2004 presentation, he danced with cast members dressed as chickens.
When the show celebrated its 15th anniversary in 1998, he appeared in the audience and had popcorn dumped on him by Chevy Chase.
“SNL” alumnus Seth Meyers, who now hosts NBC’s “Late Night” in 2019, recalled working with Trump for his hosting debut.
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“It was fascinating to be around him,” Meyers, a longtime critic of the returning president, told radio host Howard Stern. Trump “was everything you would think, he had no sense of humor, but when things worked he liked them.”
Watch that interview here:
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