SNL just spelled out how screwed Mike Pence is
As his whistleblower scandal has gotten worse, Donald Trump has spent the past week trying to scapegoat Mike Pence for the whole thing. Trump stood in front of reporters and asked them repeatedly to look into Pence’s phone calls with the President of Ukraine. He leaked details of Pence’s role to the media. Now Saturday Night Live is helping to spell out just how screwed Pence is.
If you haven’t yet watched SNL and you’ve still saving it on the DVR for later, spoiler alert – we’re going to discuss the cold open. Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump character was nowhere to be seen last night, and instead the whole thing centered around Mike Pence. The premise was that people like Bill Barr, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Pompeo (portrayed by Matthew Broderick of all people) were all huddled together, trying to figure out what to do.
As the sketch went on, one of Trump’s henchmen after another got up and left, thus leaving Mike Pence all alone to deal with the fallout. When Barr left the room, he made a point of doing so as hastily as possible, refusing to address Pence’s question about whether things were going to be okay. At one point Matthew Broderick used his Pompeo character to invoke his own most memorable line, saying “impeachment happens pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around, you might miss it.”
The upshot of the sketch is that as Donald Trump’s impeachment quandary gets worse for him, he and his henchmen are going to go even further in trying to scapegoat Mike Pence. He’s the only one who’s big enough to take the fall in a way that might actually take a bit of heat off Trump in the process. Trump is going down anyway – but SNL just reminded us that Pence is going down too.
