Chances are that if you’re reading this, you gave up on watching Saturday Night Live! years ago, when it stopped being funny and got more biased in how it satirized politics. The long-running sketch comedy show never misses an opportunity to mock Republicans while routinely pulling punches with Democrats.
On Saturday night, SNL again went the same route with a cold open sketch of a CNN townhall featuring Gayle King, (portrayed by Punkie Johnson) and Charles Barkley (portrayed by Kenan Thompson) hosting a CNN town hall with Donald Trump (portrayed by James Austin Johnson).
The sketch itself isn’t particularly funny—which I’m sure doesn’t shock anyone—but what really has generated a lot of buzz is that Nikki Haley herself made an appearance in the sketch to pile on the Trump character. Haley got to ask the Trump character questions about why he won’t debate her, and make some jabs about his age and legal troubles.
“Are you doing OK, Donald? You might need a mental competency test,” Haley asked the Trump character.
But even that paled in comparison to when the host of the show, actress Ayo Edebiri, got to ask Haley a question.
“I was just curious: What would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with an ‘S’ and ends with a ‘lavery?’” Edebiri asked.
“Yep, I probably should have said that the first time,” Haley replied, before launching into the usual “and live from New York, it’s Saturday night.”
As much as I’d like credit Haley for having the guts to make the appearance, and for seemingly having a good enough sense of humor to go on a comedy show that is biased against Republicans and even allow herself to be made fun of, doesn’t Haley realize that SNL and its viewers aren’t laughing with her, they’re laughing at her?
“Had a blast tonight on SNL!” Nikki Haley said in a post on X/Twitter just before 1 a.m. Sunday morning. “Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m.”
Does she really think this will save her campaign?
And yes, it’s true that Donald Trump actually hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live in 2015, but that move sparked controversy at the time, and pretty much everyone involved at SNL has blasted the move, which likely contributed to the show becoming even more biased against Trump and Republicans during his presidency.
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The show infamously featured Kate McKinnon singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” while portraying Hillary Clinton in the show’s first cold open after Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election. There was no humor, no joke. It had the ambiance of a funeral.
Former cast member Rob Schneider said that moment killed the show for good.
“I hate to crap on my old show,” Schneider told Glenn Beck back in 2022. “I literally prayed, ‘Please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there.’ And there was no joke at the end, and I went, ‘It’s over. It’s over. It’s not going to come back.’”
Nor is Nikki Haley’s campaign.