Live from New York! It’s a conservative roast fest on Saturday Night Live!
Brace yourselves: a jaw-dropping 91% of the jokes on “SNL’s” Weekend Update this season have been aimed squarely at conservatives, while a staggering 82% of characters in the cold opens have taken aim at President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, according to a fresh analysis from the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters.
This media watchdog scrutinized the first 19 episodes of SNL’s current season through May 9, revealing a one-sided political firing squad that’s hard to ignore.
Out of 226 political jokes delivered by anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che, a whopping 205 targeted conservatives. Just 18 jokes poked fun at Democrats and other liberals, with a mere three being non-partisan. Talk about a lopsided comedy landscape!
In the cold opens, Republican and conservative characters made 49 appearances, while their leftist counterparts showed up only 10 times, with one nonpartisan character making a cameo.
This exclusive analysis didn’t even include the finale of SNL’s 51st season, which aired later. But one thing is clear: bashing Trump—who has hosted the show twice before his presidency—has been the main course this year for NBC’s iconic live sketch comedy. And guess what? Ratings are soaring thanks to the Trump bump.
Trump himself accounted for an astonishing 101 jokes—nearly half of all Weekend Update material, according to NewsBusters. “President Trump dismissed weapons fire between the US and Iran as a ‘love tap,’” Che quipped during the May 9 segment. “He also called gas prices gentle sodomy.”
As the finale approached, Trump’s character—often portrayed by James Austin Johnson—had already made a dozen appearances in cold opens this season. Remember that infamous April 4 broadcast where SNL casually joked about the possibility of Trump being assassinated?
Che awkwardly wedged that “joke” into a bit about Trump attending a performance at the newly renamed Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. “President Trump attended the opening night of ‘Chicago’ at the Kennedy Center, and I think it’s cool that the president is going to the theater. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?” he said, referencing Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Che flashed a grin as the audience erupted in laughter. “Saturday Night Live hasn’t been a good television show since President Trump hosted it,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle shot back two days later.
Trump has faced two assassination attempts during his 2024 campaign and survived another close call on April 25—just three weeks after Che’s tasteless bit—during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s character came in second for cold-open appearances with nine, followed closely by ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s characters, each with four.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US Secretary of Health and Human Services, was second only to Trump as the target of Weekend Update jokes, racking up 14. He was followed by Noem (12), conservative pundit Tucker Carlson (11), and Long Island’s notorious ex-Rep. George Santos (10).
In stark contrast, socialist NYC Mayor Mamdani—whose outrageous socialist schemes could fuel years of comedic gold—has only been targeted once by Weekend Update. His character appeared in just one cold-open segment: when comedian Ramy Youssef portrayed Mamdani in a November sketch about a NYC mayoral debate.
“I know some of you out there are scared about the idea of a young Muslim socialist mayor, so allow me to put you at ease by smiling after every answer in a way that physically hurts my face,” Youssef joked, drawing laughs by mimicking Hizzoner’s signature grin.
Mamdani even shared clips and video of himself laughing with Youssef about their uncanny resemblance during a FaceTime call while Youssef was still in costume.
“Michael Jordan famously said, ‘Republicans buy sneakers, too.’ Entertainment companies once understood that alienating half the country was probably not a great business model,” stated David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center.
“Nobody is asking SNL to become conservative, but when every political punchline is nothing more than Trump Derangement Syndrome all the time, SNL risks turning itself into a caricature of its own political obsessions.”
The findings showing late-night television leaning more left than ever shouldn’t come as a shocker.
A staggering 94% of jokes delivered by late-night hosts during the first week of Operation Eric Fury slammed the United States and its allies instead of Iran and other adversaries, according to data NewsBusters shared exclusively earlier this year.
And an eye-popping 92% of jokes made by Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and the Daily Show universe targeted the right in 2025, with liberal guests outnumbering conservative ones almost 100 to 1, according to data shared with us last December.
