President Trump's SNL complaint is an "oddly sensitive reaction" for a president who ran as a "tough guy"

The New York Times

What should be made of the president's tweet Sunday morning suggesting retribution over Saturday Night Live parodying his emergency declaration speech? Trump's complaint, says James Poniewozik, is "an oddly sensitive reaction for a man who not only ran for president as a tough guy but spent decades being satirized as a media figure. Then again, that may be exactly why it stings him so deeply now. Mr. Trump is used to dealing with SNL as a celebrity, someone who might be mocked but would be in on the joke. He’s been a recurring character on the show going back to the 1980s, when Phil Hartman played him in a holiday sketch that embellished his brand by rendering his name in gold lettering. He hosted the show in 2004 while he starred in NBC’s The Apprentice, then again while running for president in 2015. That last time SNL — like much of the news media — made the mistake of treating Mr. Trump as a celebrity, not a politician, a curiosity who, LOL, was never going to be president, so why not ride the train, have some laughs and make a buck? Maybe the president believed on some level that, once he was elected, it would stay that way...That’s a puzzling expectation for anyone who spends as much time watching the news as Mr. Trump does. But it’s a natural assumption for a celebrity whose image TV massaged for the better part of four decades." ALSO: The Washington Post demonstrates how much SNL directly lifted from Trump's actual speech.