Fred Armisen has portrayed his share of goofy characters on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and IFC’s “Portlandia” — even a few political figures. (El Bloombito, anyone?) But here’s a new one that cuts close to home: Armisen portraying Vermont’s own Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Armisen donned his finest Bernie hair in a sketch parodying the Chuck Hagel confirmation hearings that didn’t make it to the airwaves for the February 9 episode of “Saturday Night Live.” But NBC posted a “dress rehearsal” clip of the sketch to its website. It’s easy to see why it didn’t make the final cut — it’s one of those one-note “SNL” sketches that goes on about two minutes too long. And it later also raised the ire of the Anti-Defamation League, who accused NBC of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism.

Armisen/Sanders doesn’t play a critical role in the sketch, but he pops up for a few seconds at about 3:35 and returns near the end during an extended discussion on donkey fellatio.

Update 08/15/14: Here’s another version of the video:

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Tyler Machado was the digital media manager at Seven Days. He mostly worked behind the scenes making sure the website, email newsletters and social media feeds stayed in tip-top shape.

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