A Tangerine Wig and a Tightrope Walk: Alec Baldwin as Donald J. Trump

The key to a convincing Mr. Trump, the actor said, are “puffs” — his word for the pregnant pauses in the president-elect’s speech. “I see a guy who seems to pause and dig for the more precise and better language he wants to use, and never finds it,” Mr. Baldwin said

Release your tax returns and I’ll stop. Ha

.. His Trump is as much censure as impersonation. He does not write the sketches. He is paid $1,400 for each appearance on the show, he said.

“I’m not interested much by what’s inside him,” he said, but in how he moves and takes up space. Mr. Baldwin then amplifies the gestures, and distills them. An emphatic wave becomes a goofy “wax-on, wax-off” movement, he said, the simple hand motion reducing a candidate to an essence: pitchman.

.. “But I think that now that he is the president, we have an obligation — as we would if it was him or her — to dial it up as much as we can.”

.. It has been suggested that Mr. Baldwin, 58, is uniquely able to portray Mr. Trump — and to rankle him — because of their similarities. In 2011, Mr. Baldwin mulled running for mayor of New York City. They can both appear thin-skinned. Antagonized by paparazzi and feeling harassed by what he says are false accusations that he uttered slurs, Mr. Baldwin has at times publicly denounced the media. On Twitter, he can be pugilistic, notably with Mr. Trump and with his brother Stephen Baldwin, over their divergent political views.

.. He riffed on Mr. Trump’s irascibility and his pronunciation of “China.”

.. Mr. Trump’s win caught the show off guard, Mr. Baldwin said, countering expectations on the show’s set of four years of Ms. McKinnon playing her mildly maniacal Ms. Clinton as president.