On Monday, Donald Trump Jr., who may be turning his Twitter account into a cottage industry for taking on leftists, fixed his eye on a new target, actor Alec Baldwin, who stated on Twitter that he was concerned that President Trump’s reaction to an SNL skit satirizing him would constitute a threat to his safety and that of his family.
Trump Jr. tweeted, “The guy that punches people in the face over a parking spot, has aggressively harassed paparazzi, and humiliated his daughter berating her over the phone eye etc is worried about a tweet that doesn’t even mention him? Okay. Spare everyone your bulls*** Alec!”
Trump Jr. added, “Oh, Don’t forget the homophobic slurs… this clown is such a mess it’s hard to keep track.”
Trump Jr. was reacting to Baldwin, who tweeted at the Twitter site representing his foundation, ““I wonder if a sitting President exhorting his followers that my role in a TV comedy qualifies me as an enemy of the people constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?”
Baldwin’s tweet was triggered by President Trump tweeting, “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
President Trump immediately followed that tweet with another, tweeting in all caps, “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
The Alec Baldwin-Donald Trump Sr. feud goes back years; in December 2016, Baldwin impersonated Trump on SNL, triggering Trump to tweet, “Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad.”
Baldwin replied, “Release your tax returns and I’ll stop. Ha.”
By March 2017, Baldwin was saying he was thinking of giving up his impersonation of Trump, asserting, “Trump just overwhelmingly lacks any sportsmanship, he remains, bitter, and angry, and you just want to look at him and go, ‘You won’ His policies aside, which you can hate, I thought he would have just relaxed.”
Also in November 2017, Baldwin was releasing his new book, “You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story Of My Fantastic First Year As President Donald J. Trump (A So-Called Parody).” The book had excerpts like this one:
My third birthday party, fantastic time, leaning over the Carvel cake to blow out the candles, my hair catches on fire. Mom yells, “Fred, no,” just as Dad pushes my face into the cake to put it out and starts laughing like a maniac, one of the only times I remember him laughing. The other thing I know is that you always remember the downs much, much more clearly and much, much longer than the ups, like each one is one of those video jiffies from Twitter playing over and over and over in your mind, and you can’t delete them.
That same month, Baldwin explained that the reason he kept impersonating Trump was as a favor to Trump-haters, stating that the early plan was just to play the role on “about three shows and be out,” but audience response made him feel obligated to continue. He said, “I’m the first person who wakes up everyday and goes, we’re done, we’re done — I’m sick of this,” but added that he so received much praise for the role, as people gushed statements such as “you’re getting us through this,” that he felt obligated to continue.
By December 2017, Baldwin had left any complaints about playing Trump behind, making plans to turn his impersonation of Trump into a one-man show with the help of SNL producer Loren Michaels. Baldwin told Howard Stern, “”We may take the book and make it into a one-man show on Broadway. What Lorne did do is give me permission to write this book which was up to him to do. … My rendering of him is his intellectual property. His people made it, his people wrote it; I just showed up.”
In October 2018, Baldwin had gone full anti-Trump zealot, telling a Democrat fundraiser in New Hampshire, “In an orderly and formal way, and lawful way, we need to overthrow the government of the United States under Donald Trump.”