With Larry David hosting the most recent “Saturday Night Live”, it was all but assured there would be a fine selection of Bernie Sanders jokes. In an interview with TIME a year ago, he derided coverage of politics as a “baseball game”, saying he wanted to focus on the issues.
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“I am so sick of the 1% getting this preferential treatment”, Sanders said as he arrived on the set to big applause.
Dressed in a newspaper boy cap and a tan jacket, Sanders appeared during a Titanic spoof where David (playing an Irish aristocrat) was trying to get the doomed ship’s captain to save him instead of the “women and children”.
“Sounds like socialism to me”, David’s character counters. “We need to unite and work together if we’re all going to get through this”. In order to get onto a lifeboat, David’s character says he should get priority because he is from a rich family.
“Democratic socialism”, the presidential candidate clarifies. “I do not shake disgusting hands”. David-as-Sanders refused to touch what he called her “germ-infested hand” and returned to his campaign office. “Listen, people love me”. He is the latest candidate to take the “SNL” stage.
It features all of the emblematic quirks and idiosyncrasies that have come to be synonymous with David in his assumed character as the democratic presidential hopeful.
Donald Trump showed off his comedic chops last November. An aide to the Senator said he was not spending the night in NY and would return immediately after the show was over. David asked Sanders how things were going in New Hampshire, and the Vermont senator turned the tables on the comedian and offered his own impersonation.
Titled Bern Your Enthusiasm, the sketch shows Sanders upsetting voters (Leslie Jones and Aidy Bryant) in Iowa, despite the best efforts of his Curb-like friends (Bobby Moynihan, Cecily Strong, and Jay Pharoah).
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“It’s pretty, pretty, pretty good”, he says.
