Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton Will Get Us Through This Ridiculous Election

The premiere of Saturday Night Live's 42nd season kicked off with a scathing satire of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The always brilliant Emmy-winning comedian Kate McKinnon returned as Hillary Clinton, and Alec Baldwin appeared as a spot-on Donald Trump—a role previously assigned to Darrell Hammond.

While the debate already felt like a comedy sketch in moments, SNL's version of events hilariously exaggerated Clinton’s facial expressions and her attempts to seem more relatable, and captured the absurdity of Trump’s fumbling attempts to appeal to black voters and his frequent interruptions of Clinton.

Michael Che played a deadpan Lester Holt, introducing Clinton as the candidate who has been battling pneumonia. McKinnon appeared on stage coughing and leaning on a cane, before dropping into a somersault and saying, "I’m better than ever. Let’s do this."[iframe https://giphy.com/embed/twxsdWTECGP9S allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"]
Che also introduced Trump as "the man to blame for the bottom half of all his kids' faces" before Baldwin took the stage with a pinched face and a lot of bravado. "Good evening, America," he started. "I'm going to be so good tonight. I am going to be so calm, and so presidential that all of you watching are going to cream your jeans."

McKinnon then poked fun at Clinton’s Trumped up trickle-down economics jab, saying she’d just come up with it "right off the stiff red cuff."[iframe https://giphy.com/embed/9HclapjIcp6xO allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="367" width="650"]
Baldwin's rambling Trump, who blamed job loss on China (which he pronounced GYYY-NA), decided he’d won the debate two minutes in and tried to walk off the stage, but when he was told there were still 88 minutes left he responded with, "My microphone is broken," and blamed Hillary and Obama for the malfunction. When asked what she thought about Trump's accusations, McKinnon's Clinton responded, "I think I’m gonna be president."[iframe https://giphy.com/embed/wY9rsLEUoUxdm allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"]
If you’re not quite sure how you’re going to make it to November 8th, at least Kate McKinnon’s Hillary impersonation will help you laugh your way through all the election anxiety. Plus, we now have enough perfect reaction GIFs to respond to every ridiculous thing Trump says in the next month. Well, okay, maybe it’s enough to get us through the week.[iframe https://giphy.com/embed/y8XWfxNUyzSKY allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"][iframe https://giphy.com/embed/YML0JhLl5VB5e allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"][iframe https://giphy.com/embed/wMG0oq1SXO7Go allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"][iframe https://giphy.com/embed/qbuNEqqudlBDi allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"][iframe https://giphy.com/embed/kCk8K9pK2rave allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="365" width="650"]

Watch the full SNL sketch in the video below.