Saturday Night Live’s 46th season premiere aired this weekend and included making fun of President Trump for contracting COVID-19.
“OK, look, this is weird because a lot of people on both sides are saying there’s nothing funny about Trump being hospitalized with coronavirus even though he mocked the safety precautions for the coronavirus and those people are obviously wrong,” Weekend Update co-anchor Michael Che said. “There’s a lot funny about this. Maybe not from a moral standpoint, but mathematically, if you were constructing the joke, this is all the ingredients you need. The problem is, it’s almost too funny. It’s so on-the-nose. It’d be like if I was making fun of people wearing belts and then my pants just immediately fell down.”
Che also took aim at Trump holding rallies ahead of his diagnosis.
“By the way, is anyone surprised by this?” Che asked. “I honestly thought Trump was trying to get coronavirus. I thought it was like Groundhog Day when Bill Murray knew he couldn’t die, and he was just trying anything. So, all those maskless rallies Trump was having, that was him being safe? Look, I don’t want the president to die, obviously.
“Actually, I wish him a very lengthy recovery,” the comedian added.
Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost also mocked the president for his diagnosis, joking that Trump’s use of exclamation points on Twitter shows the doctors are cutting “his hydroxychloroquine with a little bit of molly.”
“I will say that despite everything, President Trump seems to be in good spirits. He tweeted a message that ended with love and three exclamations points. So, it sounds like they’re cutting his hydroxychloroquine with a little bit of molly,” Jost said. “And then, this was good, just hours ago, Trump released a video from the hospital saying he was in better health, which is great news but I will point out that if the situation were reversed and it was Biden who got sick, Trump would 100% be at a maskless rally tonight getting huge laughs doing an impression of Biden on a ventilator. Just saying.”
The SNL season premiere also turned political during the musical guest segment, when rapper Megan Thee Stallion took aim at Republican Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron for his work overseeing the Breonna Taylor case.
“Daniel Cameron is no different than the sellout Negroes that sold our people into slavery,” the rapper said.
The segment also featured an audio clip of a Malcolm X speech, and the words “PROTECT BLACK WOMEN” were shown on the stage’s screen behind Megan Thee Stallion.
Trump’s medical team at Walter Reed National Military Medical Hospital, where the president is receiving care, held a press conference Sunday and said the president is improving and could be released as soon as Monday.
“Today he feels well. He’s been up and around. Our plan for today is to have him to eat and drink, be up out of bed as much as possible, to be mobile. And if he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the White House where he can continue his treatment course,” said Dr. Brian Garibaldi.
