NBC’s ‘SNL’ roasted for mocking assassination attempts against Trump: ‘Activism masquerading as comedy’

NBC’s "Saturday Night Live" has been blasted as "completely inappropriate" for making light of assassination attempts against former President Trump in its latest episode.

"SNL" has managed to take a break from comedy for somber moments in the past, such as when Kate McKinnon performed a version of "Hallelujah" while impersonating Hillary Clinton following Trump’s shock 2016 election victory. But while the Democratic nominee losing to Trump in 2016 was worthy of a melancholy cold open, recent assassination attempts on Trump were not. 

The long-running program began its 50th season on Saturday evening with a variety of special guests mocking current political affairs, such as Maya Rudolph as Vice President Kamala Harris, Andy Samberg as her husband Doug Emhoff, Jim Gaffigan as Gov. Tim Walz and Dana Carvey as President Biden. 

James Austin Johnson played Trump and lampooned the first assassination attempt – which killed one of Trump's supporters – that occurred July 13 in Butler, Pa., as he depicted the former president at one of his rallies. 

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James Austin Johnson played former President Trump and lampooned the first assassination attempt that occurred July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. (NBC/Screengrab)

"Where the hell is everyone going? Where are you going? I see you trying to leave, but the doors are locked. Come on back — we’re having fun. We love my rallies, except when someone does the ‘bing, bong, bing, bing, bing’ right at me," Johnson as Trump said, referring to the sounds of bullets. "You know that happened because of the rhetoric of the radical left. They say that me blaming the Democrats for inciting violence is the pot calling the kettle black."

Former NBCUniversal senior executive Mike Sington, who now bills himself as a pop culture expert and Hollywood insider, couldn’t believe "SNL" went there. 

"I was watching it live, and actually cringed when they mocked the assassination attempts in an effort to be funny. I’m no fan of Trump’s, but I thought it was in extremely poor taste," Sington told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News host Jimmy Failla wasn’t surprised because "SNL" has pivoted from comedy to "activism masquerading as comedy" in recent years. The show openly celebrated Trump losing in 2020, and its cast members 

"’SNL’ has basically devolved into a group therapy session for liberals who are wildly out of touch with the zeitgeist," Failla told Fox News Digital. 

Failla said the infamous "Hallelujah" rendition following Clinton’s 2016 loss proved how self-absorbed the show is, specifically when considering that Trump was a longtime NBC personality prior to entering politics.

"They go after things that work well in a liberal bubble, but look stupid to the rest of us, because it looks like activism masquerading as comedy," Failla said.

"The things they made fun of with Biden are the harmless things, whereas the things they make fun of with Trump always have the undercoating that's looking to steer the conversation towards how their viewers are going to vote," he continued. "It’s beneath the show that really forged an identity by dabbling in politics, but in an accessible way, which is what we try to do on my show."

Failla, who hosts "FOX News Saturday Night," believes anything can be mocked if it’s done tastefully. 

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Fox News host Jimmy Failla wasn’t surprised because "SNL" has pivoted from comedy to "activism masquerading as comedy" in recent years.  (Fox News)

"If you're making fun of a situation where he was shot and someone else was killed, then it better be funny. Like the juice better be worth the squeeze, which it clearly wasn't in this case," Failla said. "And they didn't make any effort to hide their political bias in how they covered this."

Failla said a lot of people turn to comedy as a distraction, but "SNL" doesn’t offer the escape that it used to. 

"They're keeping the focus on division. And I cover politics every week. So, I'm not saying they shouldn't. I'm just saying they're covering it in a way that's clearly catering so wholeheartedly to one side of the aisle that sometimes you see the malice in what they're doing," Failla said. 

"You can mock anything in the name of comedy. But if you're mocking it in the name of a political ideology, you're no longer doing comedy," he added. "You're doing activism masquerading as comedy. And that's what that came off as. It came off as just tasteless activism."

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Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton sings Leonard Cohens "Hallelujah" during the "Election Week Cold Open" sketch on No (Will Heath/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

Political satirist Tim Young believes the NBC program "jumped the shark politically" years ago, particularly when they treated Trump’s 2016 victory "as if it were a funeral" with McKinnon playing the piano on a dark stage. 

"From that point forward, it's been full-on leftist propaganda. Their mocking of Trump's assassination attempts was completely inappropriate," Young told Fox News Digital. 

Young believes poking fun at the assassination attempts "feeds leftist conspiracies that it never happened" and also "downplays the seriousness of the threats on Trump's life."

"Which I believe encourages more lunatics and foreign adversaries to try," Young said.

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The Trump campaign posted to social media, "There were two assassination attempts against President Trump within a span of seven weeks. @nbcsnl apparently finds that funny. Disgusting."

"SNL" also referenced the assassination attempts during the "Weekend Update" segment, during which Colin Jost quipped that he was "starting to worry that bullet got a little more than just the ear," after playing a clip of Trump saying he had a better "body" than President Biden at a recent rally.

Conservative radio host Jason Rantz said he is "all for comedy having no rules about what it targets" for humor as long as everything is balanced and amusing. 

"Bad taste? Sure, but that’s their choice to make. My issue is how disgustingly one-sided the humor has become," Rantz told Fox News Digital. 

"It’s not just Trump they loathe—it's everyone who supports him," he continued. "At the very least, you’d hope they’d be funny while being so obnoxiously partisan. But no, they’re not funny. They haven’t been funny in decades."

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Former President Trump was injured during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024.  (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

When Trump narrowly survived the assassination attempt against him in July, a bullet grazed the president's ear and the shooter killed 50-year-old Corey Comperatore — a husband, father and former fire chief at the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Department. The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, also critically wounded two other rally-goers. Weeks later, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on Sept. 15 after allegedly pushing the muzzle of an AK-47 through the chainlink fence outside where Trump was golfing in Florida.

While Young is appalled the program would make light of the assassination attempts, he also noticed something "significant" during the same sketch. 

"They mocked all of Biden's confusion, smelling hair, etc. for one of the first real times since he's been in office," Young said. 

"’SNL’ defended Biden by not being hard on him before," Young added. "Now that Kamala has been installed as the Democrat nominee, they finally treat him like they have other candidates pre-Trump."

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Fox News Digital’s Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.