Donald Trump loves to hate 'Saturday Night Live.' But did 'SNL' help elect him?

Donald Trump has had a rocky relationship with NBC's “Saturday Night Live,” the sketch-comedy show he accused of orchestrating “Republican hit jobs” during his first presidential term.

But many "SNL" cast and crew members believed they helped get him elected.

Trump hosted SNL in November 2015, five months after announcing his presidential candidacy. When he defeated Hillary Clinton a year later, a worrisome thought circulated backstage at Studio 8H, where the show is produced: Had Trump’s hosting gig amounted to an endorsement?

That's the assertion in a new biography, “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live." Its subject: Lorne Michaels, 80, who created "SNL" in 1975 and remains its top producer.

Author Susan Morrison, an editor at The New Yorker, spent 10 years compiling "Lorne," conducting hundreds of interviews with the "SNL" patriarch and the program's cast and crew.

Did 'SNL' help Donald Trump win the White House?

The notion that "SNL" helped to normalize a deeply divisive Republican presidential candidate a decade ago is counterintuitive: As Morrison writes in the book (due Feb. 18), nearly everyone on the show in 2015 was a Democrat.

Michaels and his staff have been more accustomed to defending themselves against accusations of liberal bias, as when they gave Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris a cameo on the eve of the 2024 election.  Yet as Morrison recounts, an earlier "SNL" cast believed they helped another Republican candidate, George W. Bush, win in 2000.

But first, let’s talk about Trump. After the 2016 election, Morrison writes, the "SNL" cast and writers “felt shame and anger. Many of them believed that 'SNL' bore some responsibility for Trump’s win.”  The show, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, chooses celebrity hosts for each episode. Trump had hosted before, in April 2004, near the start of his successful run on NBC's reality show “The Apprentice.”

Trump’s second turn as host was different. He was a candidate for president, although many observers dismissed his chances. “When Michaels had booked Trump to host in 2015, he, like most people, considered the candidacy a big joke,” Morrison writes. “But it was a lucrative joke. Trump was a ratings magnet: people liked to watch him, either in spite of or because of his noxiousness.”

NBC cut business ties with Trump after he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” A Hispanic coalition urged the cast to boycott the episode Trump hosted, and staffers viewed the broadcast as “a kind of endorsement,” the author writes.

But Michaels felt that part of his job was to keep "SNL" balanced. He urged writers and performers to mock candidates of all stripes. “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels said of his younger staff.

'SNL' insiders: Lorne Michaels wanted to make Trump 'likable'

Trump arrived at the studio for his 2015 appearance and immediately ticked off the cast and writers by taking a call on his cellphone during the read-through, Morrison writes, as angry protests wafted up from the street below.

Many on the staff felt "SNL" went too soft on Trump. Michaels sometimes asked writers to tone down the harsher sketches. At one story meeting, Morrison writes, writer-performer Tim Robinson smacked the table and said, “Lorne has lost his ... mind, and someone needs to shoot him in the back of the head.”

This scrap of dirty laundry has been aired before, although not in such detail. Taran Killam, who portrayed Trump on "SNL" in 2015, told a podcaster Michaels was intent on making Trump “likable.”

Hosting "SNL" allowed Trump to show he was in on the joke, and to claim (appearances notwithstanding) that he knew how to take one. The writers made him look good, which is part of their job.

In his opening monologue, Trump intoned, “A lot of people are saying, ‘Donald, you’re the most amazing guy. You’re brilliant, you're handsome, you're rich, you have everything going. The world is waiting for you to be president. So why are you hosting 'Saturday Night Live'?’ And the answer is, I have really nothing better to do.”

In the end, Michaels thought Trump’s pre-election appearance went fine. He claimed that both cast member Kate McKinnon and guest performer Larry David told him, “I really like the guy.”

Michaels rationalized Trump’s appearance to his entourage, suggesting they did the candidate no favors by putting him on the air. “We were alerting the audience that this guy is actually going to be the candidate,” Michaels told them.

'Trump was tickled' to learn Alec Baldwin would play him on 'SNL'

Months later, in the heat of the 2016 campaign, Michaels and Trump spoke by phone, and Michaels told the candidate that Alec Baldwin would portray him that fall.

“Trump was tickled,” Morrison writes of the casting news. Once the season started, however, Trump quickly soured on the impression. Baldwin’s work regularly drew the president’s wrath in his first White House tenure.

Trump’s attacks were historically atypical: Most politicians actually did seem to get the joke, sometimes even sharing the stage with their impressionists.

Some of the impressions ― Dan Aykroyd’s Jimmy Carter; Dana Carvey’s George W.H. Bush ― were eminently likable. In 2000, Morrison writes, Michaels believed his program helped give Bush's son, Republican candidate George W. Bush, “a slight edge” over Democrat Al Gore in a historically close election.  The reason, in theory, was Will Ferrell’s irresistible Bush impression. Ferrell had tapped “something charming” in Bush, in contrast to Darrell Hammond’s wooden Gore.

The idea that either Michaels or "SNL" might have been aiding a Republican candidate in any election is one of the more striking ironies in “Lorne,” given the politics of its creators.

When the ensemble gathered to prepare their first show after the 2016 election, the staff looked crushed, Morrison writes. Some were weeping.  Michaels reminded the group that half of the country had voted for Trump. “We have a job to do,” he said.

Those who felt the show had gone “criminally soft” on Trump felt “confused and annoyed,” Morrison writes, when Michaels told them, enigmatically, “We did our best.”

Daniel de Visé is a personal finance writer for USA TODAY and author of The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump hates 'Saturday Night Live.' Did 'SNL' help get him elected?