The Dictatorship
The complicated political legacy of ‘Saturday Night Live’
In a book released next week, “Saturday Night Live” executive producer Lorne Michaels addresses the show’s politics, saying “SNL” has never favored liberals or conservatives. “It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,” Michaels is quoted as saying in “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live” by Susan Morrison. “We have our biases. We have our people we like better than others, but you can’t be Samantha Bee.”
Michaels’ insistence on impartiality will likely bring howls from conservatives, who have complained for decades that “SNL” has been a liberal viper pit, mocking right-wingers and taking it easy on the icons of the left.
‘It’s the hardest thing for me to explain to this generation that the show is nonpartisan,’ Michaels is quoted as saying.
In 2019, after the show ran a sketch satirizing one of his press conferences on border policy, President Donald Trump lashed out at its “Republican hit jobs,” vowing “retribution” for making fun of him. Over the years, conservatives have called for the show to be “put out of its misery” because of its political slant, suggesting the executive producer is either “stupid or a liar” for claiming the show is nonpolitical.
And progressives, of course, see “SNL” as their own playground. In a 2003 interview, then-head writer Tina Fey told a reporter“We have a liberal bias, obviously,” and her fellow progressives have never doubted her. This is why, when the show steps out of line and allows anti-woke celebrities like Shane Gillis to host, “SNL” fans react with horror — after Gillis’ hosting gig in 2024, one comedy writer said Michaels was “unfit … to run a major network show in 2024.”
“SNL” was forged in the post-Watergate leftism of the 1970s, an era when politicians were viewed with heightened scrutiny and distrust. Michaels and young progressive writers like Al Franken and Chevy Chase drove the show’s political conscience. Three days before the 1976 Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford election, the show simply replayed the speech in which Ford announced he would be pardoning Richard Nixon, which Michaels later listed as one of his proudest moments as the producer of the legendary comedy show.
But despite “SNL’s” progressive roots, a full review of the show’s history (which I have undertaken as part of a two-year podcast project called “Wasn’t That Special”) uncovers some truly inspired moments of traditional political conservatism.
In the show’s first sketch after Trump’s election in 2016, comedian Dave Chappelle’s character attends an election night party filled with fellow progressives. As the sketch proceeds, Chappelle’s white, New York City-based friends grow increasingly incredulous as election night progresses and Trump keeps winning states. Chappelle’s character, by contrast, simply laughs at how naive his liberal friends had been throughout the election year.
To conservatives, the sketch was an admission by the show that it had been operating in a liberal bubble, unable to see why support for Trump had been growing over the past year.
Or take, for example, a 1990 “Weekend Update” desk bit in which Chris Rock complains both about how much he hates taxes and how he doesn’t mind if prisons are uncomfortable for the inmates. (“Jails are so nice, they come back twice. … They don’t have this problem in Iran because it’s hard to snatch another purse if you don’t have another hand.”) A year later, Rock returned to support the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing him only of the crime of using bad pickup lines in the workplace.
An array of recurring characters in the show have mocked progressive activism. Eddie Murphy played a recurring character named Tyrone Green (first introduced in the famous “Prose and Cons” short film), an illiterate, poetry-writing prisoner who was regularly feted by New York’s rich elite. The whole series of sketches, in which rich progressives are harshly lampooned, has a strong Tom Wolfe-ean “Radical Chic” vibe to it.
Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person.
The show also had a particular sore spot for public sector employees. In March 2001, Maya Rudolph portrayed a sassy postal worker who has no time for customers, lending comfort to those who think customer service improves when privatization reigns. In 2010, a brutal sketch featured the “Public Employee of the Year Awards,” in which government workers were given awards for being surly and amassing outlandish benefits packages.
Sure, the show famously took joyous whacks at Sarah Palin, but that’s because Sarah Palin is a ridiculous person. But those who complain about Tina Fey’s broad Palin impersonation also fail to mention a sketch from 2008 in which editors at The New York Times try to enlist their newsroom’s reporters to spend six weeks in Alaska to cover the vice presidential nominee.
The sketch savages the newsroom, portraying reporters as naive Manhattan elites who had never seen the real America. The reporters, confused about Alaska culture, wonder how they will get around without being able to call a cab, worry about polar bear attacks, and mistake a photo of a snowmobile for a “baptizing machine.”
But perhaps one of the most observant political sketches in show history ran just before the presidential election in 2016, when actor Tom Hanks joined in a performance of “Black Jeopardy!” It is assumed that Hanks, playing a red-hatted MAGA enthusiast, will embarrass himself when posed with questions (or “answers,” in “Jeopardy!” style) meant for Black contestants. Yet everyone is shocked when Hanks’ answers comport perfectly with “Black culture,” crystallizing something that had yet to be put into words — politics is a horseshoe, and Trump supporters had more in common with Black Americans than we all thought. (For instance, Hanks’ character, Doug, downplays the importance of voting, saying the outcome of elections are decided months ahead of time, anyway.)
Of course, the show hands plenty of ammo to Republicans who argue the show is hopelessly biased in favor of Democrats. When Trump won, cast members Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata all sang songs either bemoaning Clinton’s loss or mourning the end of the Barack Obama era.
But just a year earlier, “SNL” allowed Trump to host an episode while he was running for president. Trump hosted twice, eventually becoming the first president to have hosted the show. And who can forget the ratings-busting show when Palin finally showed up in Studio 8H? The New York Times even gave Palin a rave reviewcalling her “remarkable” and “delightful.”
Whatever your opinion of ‘SNL’s’ politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed.
Nonetheless, there is clearly a pattern in how Republicans are depicted on the show versus Democrats. Generally, GOP politicians lampooned by the show fall into a few select categories: Palin (stupid), George W. Bush (stupid), Dick Cheney (old, evil), George H.W. Bush (old, clueless), Dan Quayle (stupid), Bob Dole (old, clueless) and Trump (clueless, old, evil). And yet, one of the show’s most inspired political sketches featured Phil Hartman playing Ronald Reagan as a secret genius, which suggests the show perhaps should have inverted the formula more often.
Meanwhile, the show has regularly depicted Democrats as being too brainy for the presidency (Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore). Of course, Bill Clinton got the full treatment once his priapic activities threatened his presidency; his travails were simply too juicy a target to ignore. (Even Monica Lewinsky made an appearance on the show, in 1999.)
Whatever your opinion of “SNL’s” politics, Michaels has noticed how each side reacts to being ridiculed. “Democrats tend to take it personally; Republicans think it’s funny,” he said in 2014. We will know if that’s true in 2025 if Michaels avoids a Trump-mandated prison term.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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