(Updated with video) Saturday Night Live has had a lot of POTUS mocking over the decades, but you wouldn’t have known it from Sunday’s SNL50: The Anniversary Special.
Tonight’s live show had Alec Baldwin, Will Ferrell, Jay Pharoah, Tina Fey, Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler in attendance but there was nothing of the presidents and presidential candidates they’ve played and poked fun at over nearly 10 presidencies.
In an era where Donald Trump and the FCC are targeting the media and media owners, Baldwin’s acclaimed impression of the former Celebrity Apprentice and SNL host was noticeably absent. Whether or not it was the chill of further legal and regulatory action against NBC owners Comcast, with almost everything else and the kitchen sink from SNL‘s history on screen tonight, seeing no politics out of the POTUS-mocking show’s long legacy was almost as rank as OG Dan Aykroyd not being there.
The lack of Blues Brothers co-creator Aykroyd meant no Jimmy Carter talking down a guy peaking on LSD. Chevy Chase was in the A-list crowd in Studio 8H, but the original cast member didn’t take the stage to fall down and over as Gerald Ford.
Watch on Deadline
No Fey as Sarah Palin, and no Poehler as Hillary Clinton. No Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush and no Ferrell as George W. Bush, and no Pharoah as Barack Obama. No Sudeikis, nor James Austin Johnson nor Carvey nor Jim Carrey, as Joe Biden. No Rudolph in her Emmy-winning Kamala Harris role, which got SNL and NBC in some equal-time trouble last fall. And, on a show that the 45th and 47th POTUS watches, as Dave Chappelle recently pointed out, nobody as Trump.
In fact, leading to some speculation Harris might show up as a surprise, the former VP and her husband Doug Emhoff are in New York City this Presidents’ Day weekend taking in Gypsy on Broadway. But, they were a no-show as the three-hour live special wrapped with a roaring multi-tune performance from Paul McCartney.
Even if SNL wanted to avoid a presidential swipe from Trump, they worked at his omission in primetime tonight. The show did have Trump in a montage of past hosts – as you can see below at the 2:14 mark. However, the MAGA boss was not among what should have been an obvious inclusion in an overview of questionable poorly aging skits and segments from the past. The latter even included OJ Simpson, Robert Blake and Sean “Diddy” Combs, but no Trump.
In celebration of #SNL50: The Anniversary Special, we present to you every #SNL host bumper ever! pic.twitter.com/0qp0tIQ5LN
— Saturday Night Network (@thesnlnetwork) February 16, 2025
The show’s cold open typically features some riff on the political news of the week. The last one, on January 18, just before Trump was sworn in for the second term, featured Johnson as the then president-elect doing “the weave,” or his stream-of-consciousness speaking style.
Trump has lashed out at the show and Baldwin’s portrayal, and more recently targeted Seth Meyers’ late-night show, evening threatening NBCUniversal owner Comcast. His FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, recently revived an equal-time complaint against the network for featuring Kamala Harris in anSNL cameo several days before the election. Carr’s predecessor, Jessica Rosenworcel, had dismissed the complaint, as Trump’s campaign was given time on the network the next day during sports coverage.
All in all, besides a mash-up of Hamilton and Rudy Giuliani, played one again to perfection by Kate McKinnon, a show that still seeks to be topical was silent on one of the most discussed subjects in the country and around the globe.
Or maybe Michaels, SNL and NBC thought Robert De Niro, star of the upcoming Netflix political thriller series Zero Day, said it all when the Oscar winner made a quip in tonight’s “Debbie Downer” sketch about America and the world “living in a full diaper” right now.
Even if it is wall-to-wall politics when SNL returns in its regular spot March 1, Sunday’s SNL50 special was a missed opportunity and a ring kissing by any other name.
The post ‘SNL50’: Decades Of Political Satire & POTUS Mocking Noticeably Absent From Anniversary Special appeared first on Deadline.
