Alec Baldwin has said he fears his satirical impersonations of Donald Trump could lead supporters of the president to act out on his tweets and exact “retribution” upon him.
In an interview on the podcast the Dworkin Report on Wednesday, the actor said the president “signals people” where to direct their anger “and then the actions flow from there”.
Baldwin has won many fans and many enemies with his mocking impressions of Trump on the US show Saturday Night Live (SNL).
He reprised the role last week to recreate the president’s national emergency speech from Friday, saying: “Wall works, wall makes safe. You don’t have to be smart to understand that – in fact it’s even easier to understand if you’re not that smart.”
Trump, despite last year claiming he doesn’t watch SNL, responded on Twitter, asking: “How do these networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution?”
Then, hammering his point home, he tweeted: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Speaking on Wednesday, Baldwin said: “People would say to me early on, do you have any concerns about retaliation, not necessarily from the government or from Trump, but from his agitators?
“I always said not really, I didn’t really think that was something that was real, until now, when he made this comment about retribution and he thought SNL should be investigated.
“Trump signals people, not necessarily what to do, but how to feel, and that’s the beginning. The beginning is you make people angry, the beginning is you make people agitated and bitter and then the actions flow from there.”
Earlier this week Baldwin had asked on Twitter if Trump’s words “constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?”, prompting a response from Donald Trump Jr.
He said: “Spare everyone your bullshit Alec.”
During the podcast on Wednesday, Baldwin spoke of the possible outcomes of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
He said: “Nobody has any idea, but in the way that people have this silly parlour game where they speculate as to what’s going to happen, Trump may not go down, he may not go to prison, he may not be impeached, but it sure looks like his son’s going to be indicted ... and unless he’s pardoned, he’ll go to prison and I guess he’ll have a lot of time to watch SNL then.”