NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” returned for its 46th season with comedian Jim Carrey playing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Alec Baldwin returning as President Donald Trump, and a tone that suggested the rush of recent events were even too much for the writers to process.
Those events included that debacle of a presidential debate, Trump’s failure to denounce white supremacy, and Trump being diagnosed with the coronavirus.
After last week’s trippy cosmic episode, HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” (Sunday at 9 p.m.) returns with an installment grounded in the aftermath of an unspeakably evil, true moment in American history.
And it serves as a wrenching backdrop for a pivotal chapter that finds our heroes making deals with a devil to protect one another.
Last night’s presidential debate may go down in the books as one of the worst in American history – with a sitting president who couldn’t stop interrupting and a veteran newsman turned moderator who could not bother to contain him.
But the night’s most shocking moment – the one that lingers hours after and says everything about Donald Trump’s character and fitness for office came when Chris Wallace challenged Trump to condemn white supremacists.
The man who saw “fine people on both sides” of a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville in 2017 balked and tried blaming the left for all the violence at Black Lives Matters rallies.
Then there was this:
“What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name. Proud Boys — Stand back, stand by.”
A sitting president would not condemn racists, and instead offered encouragement to one of the most violent groups on national television.
The moment reverberated like a thunderclap on social media.
Members of the Proud Boys see Trump as their national commander and have already adopted his words as marching orders. They know they have a friend in the White House.
Watch the clip for yourself. And know this: If you vote for a racist, you are a racist. It’s that simple.
Mark Perigard 