It was only four months ago that Alec Baldwin dropped a proverbial bomb on late-night television with his scowling, finger spasm riddled impersonation of “Easy D” Donnie Trump on SNL. Four months that saw the reality TV goon go from a laughable also-ran to the clown emperor of the free world, with his weaponized fountain pen sewing terror, confusion, and dank memes throughout the land.
And so, back in those simpler, more innocent times, few could expect that Baldwin’s droll caricature would eventually turn into a shining light of resistance and provocation; or that the parody would emerge as a cultural reference so powerful that it would become indistinguishable from the from the man himself.
But that’s exactly what happened last Friday when one of the Dominican Republic’s oldest newspapers, El Nacional, accompanied an article about Trump’s stance on Israeli settlements with a photo of a pouty-faced Alec Baldwin accompanied by the text “Donald Trump presidente de EEUU.”
After the gaffe went viral, El Nacional followed up with a terse apology explaining that the image had arrived from the Associated Press the day of publication, though they admit that it was clearly identified as Alec Baldwin. Of course, we can understand if El Nacional’s photo editor rushed the job to get his Friday night bachata on; but the fact that the entirety of the editorial staff missed the mix-up should be taken as the highest of compliments by Baldwin and the SNL staff.