“Saturday Night Live” viewers got a double dose of hilarity last night when David – whose Sanders impression on “SNL” stole the show earlier this season – appeared alongside Sanders himself in a sketch set aboard a sinking ship. “Though rumors of Sanders” appearance had been confirmed prior to the episode’s broadcast, the 75-year-old senator was nowhere to be found in the show’s cold open or David’s monologue.
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First up was a digital short mash-up of sorts called “Bern Your Enthusiasm”, a play on David’s erstwhile (but possible not erstwhile) HBO series.
“Sounds like socialism to me”, David’s character snarks, before “Sanderswitzky” corrects him.
“Democratic socialism”, Sanders clarified in his pronounced Brooklyn accent.
“What’s the difference?” David asks? The fundraising page referenced one of David’s jokes about Sanders’ small-donation, anti-super PAC campaign, asking readers to contribute their “vacuum pennies”.
“I am Bernie Sanderswinsky, but we’re going to change it when we get to America so it’s not quite so Jewish”, Sanders said.
In true Larry David fashion, the actor becomes visibly disgusted when cast member Leslie Jones reaches out to shake his hand after coughing into hers and stirs a lot of drama.
Right on queue, Bernie Sanders appears dressed in period costume and a flat cap to shout David down. At the campaign office, “Sanders” comes under fire from staffers, who eerily resemble Susie Essman, Jeff Garlin and J.B. Smoove (and are played by Cecily Strong, Bobby Moynihan and Jay Pharoah, respectively).
David pays Sanders with all the idiosyncratic tendencies of his curbed character. “I’m so sick of the one percent getting this preferential treatment”, he said, adding a familiar line from his stump speech. The people he slighted were then showed voting for Clinton in a caucus she won in real life by a razor-thin margin.
With the New Hampshire primary approaching on Tuesday, politics permeated “SNL”.
What did you think of the sketch?
To drive home the point, the woman whom David-as-Sanders snubbed – and her entire family – later appeared on TV at a Hillary Clinton victory rally.
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Later in the sketch, Sanders refused to help one of his supporters pop her shoulder back into place after she got into a auto accident.
