Donald Trump’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ Draws Highest Ratings In Years

Why are you hosting “Saturday Night Live”?

Following the announcement of his appearance as the host of “Saturday Night Live”, a Latino Group reportedly offered a reward of $5,000 to any individual who could disturb Trump in the show. It was easily the best-rated episode in the current 41st season, 47% higher than the Miley Cyrus-hosted episode a few months ago – which featured Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, funnily enough. It didn’t surprise me that the writers would put it in; what surprised me is that Trump would allow it. Supposedly, he’s serious about the wall, it’s not a joke.

For candidate Mr Trump, whose many interview and debate appearances have drawn large audiences, a surge in this week’s SNL ratings seemed assured.

“Whatever one can say about Donald Trump, he’s shrewd about the TV business”.

Taran Killam, this season’s resident Trump impersonator, said that “the show’s gotten better by about 2 billion percent” now that Trump is on.

Nevertheless, Trump’s highly anticipated gig on Saturday’s episode ended up garnering the 40-year-old comedy show its highest overnight ratings since 2012.

Only hours after the broadcast, Trump was back on television and characteristically bullish about his performance, calling it “very well received and probably got very good ratings, who knows”.

“The fevered lead-up to Donald Trump’s “Saturday Night Live” episode turned out to be more exciting than the edition of the show he hosted”, wrote Variety TV columnist, Maureen Ryan.

Before the show, protesters outside NBC studios called on the network to “Dump Trump” because of his controversial remarks on immigration. They comb over 600,000 sites and social platforms to see how people are engaging with SNL and Trump content.

As if learning nothing from all the memes the Internet did to Drake for his song “Hotline Bling”, Donald Trump just had to take a shot at it himself.

Mr Trump hosted SNL as scheduled, amid high anticipation, sharp criticism and calls for the show to dump him.

Watch the video of Trump’s monologue and David’s interruption below.