Bill Maher has slammed Saturday Night Live for a 50th-anniversary show that suggested Make America Great Again followers are backward and racist.
The special, which aired in February, caused uproar among conservatives after Tom Hanks reprised his role as Doug—the MAGA hat-wearing racist who refuses to shake a Black man’s hand.
In his latest Club Random podcast episode, Maher—who recently bent the knee to Trump with a White House visit—discussed the SNL50 bit with fitness expert Jillian Michaels.
“I hated it, too, and I said it on my show. I know. I hated it,” he raged. “Wearing the MAGA hat, not shaking hands with a Black person. And that’s when I thought, ‘You people don’t know MAGA people.’”
Maher conceded that some ultra-conservative Donald Trump fans “have their issues,” but contended that they are not expressly racist.
“I mean, they have their issues and I certainly have my issues with them… of course, there’s some racists everywhere who are that bad, but generally, all the MAGA people I know have no problem shaking hands with a Black person. You’re just hysterical and you’re not helping,” Maher added.
He then added that it’s a “lie that MAGA people won’t shake hands” with a Black person. “I get it, it’s part of a skit and it’s an exaggeration and that’s comedy. It’s a little too delicate a subject to go there,” he said.
“They probably think it’s great,” he added, referencing the creators of the sketch. “As a liberal, I don’t like it. Again, because lying offends me. I’m a comedian, when the premise isn’t real I can’t go with it.
Black Jeopardy! #SNL50 pic.twitter.com/QFKKTRWeer
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 17, 2025
“The premise doesn’t ring true. It might have rang true X years ago. It doesn’t now.”
He said “that’s where we are now,” because the “hate card” is what garners a reaction from partisans.
“They just want to feel that, ‘Yeah, that’s right! He’s Hitler!’ Let’s go right to your devil,” he added.
Hanks’ “Doug” character first appeared on the network in 2016. He was in the Black Jeopardy! sketch, a satirical game show filled with questions that are only answerable by Black people.
Doug, who wore a “Make America Great Again” cap and American Eagle shirt, was surprisingly adept at answering the questions, despite being white.
In that sketch, Black Jeopardy! host Darnell Hayes, played by Kenan Thompson, attempts to shake Doug’s hand. Doug backs away from the offer but eventually agrees to embrace Hayes.
This joke was repeated when Hanks reprised his role for February’s commemorative episode.
He again refused a handshake from Hayes, seemingly not having learned anything in the eight years since his debut. “Don’t like that, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Doug can be heard saying, before eventually shaking the host’s hand.
Like Maher, conservatives were not impressed by the gag—or the episode generally.
Popular right-wing commentator Benny Johnson raged at SNL over the idea: “Donald Trump just won a landslide election and has never been more popular with Americans. They have learned nothing.”
Another popular conservative personality, Mario Nawfal, described the sketch as “tone deaf.” “Hollywood still doesn’t get it: Portraying Trump supporters as racist caricatures while he’s winning record minority support. SNL’s trying 2016 jokes in 2025,” Nawfal wrote.
Link Lauren, a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claimed that saying the MAGA movement was racist “is disgusting.”
“This show wonders why their ratings are in the gutter,” Lauren wrote. “Trump won the popular vote. This tired trope that MAGA is racist is disgusting. SNL is an unfunny show for snobbish liberal elites. The current Republican Party is a big tent coalition compromised of many former Democrats. Good riddance, SNL!”
Victoria Jackson, a Trump supporter who appeared on the show between 1986 and 1992, told TMZ the sketch was “stupid.”
“Did anyone make fun of the Kamala supporters?” she asked, referencing 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
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