The Media Research Center has long hated “Saturday Night Live” for failing to be sufficiently right-wing, and Steve Malzberg took that hate to unreasonable levels in a March 1 post:
On Saturday night, less than 24 hours after the United States and Israel launched attacks inside Iran, as the men and women of our military were facing the dangers associated with those ongoing missions, as well as retaliatory missile attacks from Iran aimed at our military bases throughout he Middle East, the twisted minds at NBC’s Saturday Night Live decided it would be a great time to attempt to mock our Commander-In-Chief President Trump, and Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of War.
The attack began immediately, during the cold open, with a voiceover reading of what was flashed on the screen. “Last evening at the very normal time of two in the morning, President Trump informed the nation that we were at war with Iran. And now with some further thoughts, President Trump.” Does NBC think secret attacks should happen at 9 am?
[…]Every Democrat and their affiliated comedians are making Epstein-files wisecracks. They didn’t joke when President Clinton went to war in Bosnia right after the Lewinsky impeachment faded away.
Clearly, the NBC crew doesn’t think about all our service members putting their lives on the line.
Malzberg didn’t disprove “SNL’s” point. Instead, he ranted further about his favorite president and his war being the target of jokes:
Later on the show’s Weekend Update segment, Jost and Michael Che played a clip of Trump from 2011, fearing that Obama would start a war with Iran. Che then weighed in with, “Detractors on CNN are saying that Trump had no authorization for this war. But he actually did. Netanyahu said it was okay. I can’t believe our leader can just attack Iran with no vote, no permission from Congress, or anything. I mean what is this Iran?”
This is not the first time Che has made controversial remarks about Israel, but last Saturday, all of SNL’s attacks on our current war effort were simply inexcusable.
Malzberg didn’t explain why it shouldn’t be assumed that Israel played a role in encouraging Trump to wage war on Iran.
Alex Christy took over the SNL-bashing duties in a March 17 post:
NBC’s James Austin Johnson and Colin Jost reprised their President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth roles on Saturday Night Live for some Iran-related hot takes that were disguised as satire. According to Johnson, the reason why gas prices are increasing is because of a domino effect that started with the Epstein files while Jost suggested Hegseth is bombing Iranian schools while drunk.
The cold open began with a family at a gas station where the father, played by Mikey Day, declared, “If anyone has to use the bathroom, do it now. We’ve got another two hours before we get to grandma’s. I’m just going to fill up the tank.”
With overly dramatic music now playing, Ashley Padilla, who was playing the mother, got equally dramatic, “Fill up? Not all the way though, right?”
As the drama played out, Padilla added that gas cost “$5 a gallon,” but as of the publishing of this article, the average cost of gas is $3.79 a gallon. Nevertheless, Padilla’s character added “Kids, we’re going to have to leave one of you behind.”
That’s a weird thing for Christy to randomly fact-check. He continued:
That led Marcello Hernandez to ask, “Dad, why does gas cost so much?”
That’s when Johnson interrupted proceedings to declare, “The Epstein files! Kidding. But possibly not. It’s called butterfly effect, right? Epstein was first domino. Epstein, bing bing, bong bong, bing bing, bong bong, war! Anyway, hi, it’s me, Donald Trump. You might remember me from such campaign promises as lower gas prices and no more wars. Psych! We love to make promises because a promise is just a lie that hasn’t happened yet.”
Eventually, Jost joined the skit, and he tried without much success to satirize Hegseth’s recent condemnations of how the media has covered the war, “The president called me here today to give you news on the war, okay, so listen up. The news is, we won. #Winning. So, you can stop asking me all about it, okay? Don’t even worry about it. Fuggetaboudit. The real problem is, all you gaybies—gay babies, copyright—all you gaybies in the media are completely unpatriotic. Okay. They’re using what I do and say to make me look like a fool.”
He also claimed, “You know, the press says we bombed a school? I just blame it on the a-a-a-ayatollah. And also on alcohol. All you dweebs stop saying the Strait of Hormuz is closed. It’s wide open. Sure, there’s a bunch of land mines floating in the water. Water mines, I guess. But if you’re an oil tanker and you’re driving it and you see one of the mines, just do what I used to do at every DUI checkpoint, close your eyes and gun it.”
Christy then decided to do another random fact-check:
First of all, Hegseth isn’t bombing anything himself, drunk or otherwise. The school was almost certainly the result of outdated intelligence, and it isn’t Hegseth’s responsibility to micromanage target selection like he’s Robert McNamara or Lyndon Johnson. Finally, securing the strait takes time, and the fact that something wasn’t achieved in five minutes does not mean it is a failure. Initial targets were naturally concerned with air defenses, ballistic missiles, and drones. The navy isn’t going to rush a bunch of ships into the strait just because SNL doesn’t know anything about modern naval warfare.
How does Christy know that the Iran school bombing was “almost certainly the result of outdated intelligence”? He doesn’t.
Tim Graham took the SNL-bashing baton for an April 5 post:
The “comedy” writers at NBC’s Saturday Night Live have a raging hatred of President Trump. In the fake-news “Weekend Update” segment, fake anchor Michael Che made a joke about Trump being assassinated at the theater like Abraham Lincoln. The president’s been shot once and they caught a second attempted assassination before it could happen. None of that curbs the “comedy.”
Che first made an Antichrist joke:
Funny, we remember Graham’s fellow travelers at WorldNetDaily unironically insisting that President Obama was the Antichrist, and we don’t recall Graham complaining about that. He went on to huff:
Earlier in the segment, fake anchor Colin Jost also scraped the bottom of the barrel by suggesting Trump might be behind Jeffrey Epstein being killed in prison.
This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi was asked to redact herself from her job. President Trump reportedly fired Bondi over her handling of the Epstein files, because the only person Trump has ever trusted to handle the Epstein situation is a prison guard with the cameras off.
Jost made a naughty “sick burn” face after that one. He also threw in a joke at the vice president’s expense. “J.D. Vance is releasing a book about his conversion to Catholicism. The Catholic Church is calling it, ‘somehow the worst publicity we’ve ever had!'” Hunter Biden’s memoir never drew a joke like this. They didn’t joke about him walking out of a Catholic Church with his Dad. That would apparently be mean.
Like Graham playing Biden whataboutism isn’t mean? Please.
Christy returned to play comedy cop in an April 14 post:
NBC’s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che were at it again this past weekend. A week after joking about President Trump hypothetically getting shot again, they considered the possibility of Second Lady Usha Vance committing suicide to get away from Vice President JD Vance. Along the way, the duo would launch other outrageous attacks, including playing around with anti-Semitic puppeteering tropes and accusing the country of sexism.
Jost also declared that “President Trump did genuinely issue a post threatening to destroy Iran’s entire civilization and ended with the phrase ‘praise be to Allah’ and I know that makes Trump sound like he is a radical terrorist, but remember, Trump has already been to a paradise with 72 virgins.”
Che then followed by returning to the idea that Netanyahu is some sort of puppet master, “There’s growing confusion whether Israel being allowed to continue bombing Lebanon was part of the ceasefire with Iran. Ultimately that decision comes down to the man controlling our military: Benjamin Netanyahu.”
Shortly after, Jost turned to the ceasefire talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, “JD Vance was asked about Iran’s right to enriched uranium, and he made kind of a weird analogy. Watch.”
In a clip, Vance explained that “My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane because she and I have an agreement she’s not going to do that because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”
Not only was Jost confused by the analogy, he took it ten steps further, “What the hell are you talking about? Only thing that makes any sense in that entire analogy is that we can all understand JD Vance’s wife having the urge to jump.”
Later, in non-Iran-related news, Che turned to another one of SNL’s favorite topics, “The Justice Department has formed a task force intended to eradicate anti-Christian bias, which hopefully works better than the church’s strategy of molesting it out of you.”
Should someone who has so little grasp of comedy really judge what’s funny? The MRC seems to think so.