Kamala Harris Aims Jibe at Donald Trump During Surprise SNL Appearance

Ahead of the presidential election on Nov. 5, Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). The Democratic presidential nominee flew to New York City after hosting a rally in North Carolina, where her opponent, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, also held a rally in the pivotal battleground.

Harris had a starring role in the Nov. 2 show’s “2024 Pre-Election Cold Open.” The skit started off by revisiting some of the most talked about campaigning moments over the past week, with Maya Rudolph continuing her portrayal of Harris and James Austin Johnson, clad in a garbage vest, parodying Trump.

The sequence then turned to Rudolph’s depiction of Harris sitting in front of a vanity table, wishing she could “talk to someone who’s been in [her] shoes, you know? A Black, South Asian woman running for President… preferably from the Bay Area.” Then, the camera panned to Harris sitting on the other side of the pretend mirror.

After lengthy applause from the crowd, Harris said she was there to remind Rudolph and, by extension, herself: “You got this.”

Harris continued: “Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors”—a jibe based on a viral clip of Trump struggling to open the door to a garbage truck this week.

Hitting their stride, Harris and Rudolph, who remained in character throughout, continued with a comedy rhyme-style pep talk with one another, beginning with the SNL star saying, “Now Kamala, take my palm-ala,” before the two agreed that America needs to “keep Kamala and carry on-a-la.”

The two then joined each other at the center of the stage for Rudolph to say she was voting for Harris come Tuesday, and to deliver the show’s iconic final lines of the cold open together: “And live from New York, it’s Saturday night.” It was then up to this week’s host, former SNL writer John Mulaney, to take over.

Harris has never hosted or guested on the show before, but previously praised Rudolph’s impression of her during an appearance on The View in October, saying of the SNL star: “She’s so good.”

Meanwhile, Trump has hosted SNL twice: once in 2004, and once as a presidential candidate in 2015, though he did not appear on SNL this season, or since his presidency.

On Saturday evening, ahead of SNL airing, a Republican Trump-appointed member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claimed that Harris’ appearance on the show was a “blatant effort to evade” the FCC's Equal Time rule.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Brendan Carr said: “The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct—a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.”

However, in a statement given to The Guardian and other publications, a spokesperson for the FCC said: “The FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”