ABSTRACT
The caricature of President Donald J. Trump, played by comic actor Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live, has been celebrated for its outlandishness as much as its uncanniness. As a mode of comic ridicule, Baldwin-as-Trump comes off as a rhetorical attack on the president’s character, particularly with respect to executive dysfunction. This chapter argues that Baldwin’s performance of caricature attack on Trump constitutes a mimetic construction of the stupid and ribald as it emerges out of the president’s own words and deeds. In comic travesty, that is, performative caricature is considered for its judgment of ‘true’ character.
