Saturday Night Live continued its longstanding tradition of giving problematic people a platform with two questionable judgement calls this weekend. First, it gave Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley the chance to seem “fun” (I guess?), in a cold open that saw the actual anti-trans, pro-gun, Black-friend haver rib a Donald Trump impersonator in the sketch show’s cold open. Then it announced that its next host will be Shane Gillis, a comedian who was hired, then fired from the show’s cast in 2019 after news of his public mockery of Asian people and his use of anti-gay slurs reached SNL management.
Haley’s appearance on the February 3 show can be viewed in the clip above, or on Haley’s own YouTube page, (which posted it even before NBC did). In the segment, which kicked off the show, we’re presented with a South Carolina-set CNN town hall event hosted by Gayle King (Punkie Johnson) and Charles Barkley (Kenan Thompson). After SNL’s ongoing Trump impersonator, James Austin Johnson, took the faux town hall stage, he was peppered with various questions from cast members, explaining his plans for the presidential election and how he will “stop Taylor Swift from infiltrating the Super Bowl.”
Then a “concerned South Carolina voter,” was introduced, and the real Haley stood to ask “why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” After an exchange of barbs between the genuine and mock politician, in which the writers allowed Haley to get the better of Trump, host Ayo Edebiri stood 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’?”
“Yes, I probably should have said that the first time.” Haley said, the show’s writers allowing her to slip neatly from the barbs of any hook. In a tweet posted shortly after her appearance, Haley leveraged her appearance against President Joe Biden, writing “’I see dead people.’ That’s exactly what voters will think if this race is between Trump and Biden in the fall,” and saying that she “had a blast.”
Haley isn’t the first candidate SNL has amplified via comedy. Trump has hosted the show twice, once as host of The Apprentice in 2004, and again as a presidential candidate in 2015. Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Bernie Sanders and a number of other presidential candidates have also appeared during their campaigns.
Out of all those, former cast members most frequently call Trump’s stint out as its most regrettable, with Taran Killam saying in 2017 that Trump’s 2015 hosting spin “normalized him and it makes it O.K. for him to be part of the conversation,” and that it “only grows more embarrassing and shameful as time goes on.”
Eve Batey
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