A commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is calling out Vice President Kamala Harris‘ recent appearance on Saturday Night Live.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr sounded off on X, formerly known as Twitter, amid the announcement of VP Harris’s SNL appearance. According to Carr, a senior Republican on the commission appointed by former president Donald Trump, Harris’ appearance on the show was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”
“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,” he explained. “Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.”
“Just weeks ago, SNL’s Lorne Michaels said that they would not be bringing any of the candidates on due to election and equal time laws,” Carr wrote in a follow-up tweet.
“NBC has now filed a notice acknowledging that they provided free airtime last night to the Democratic Party’s nominee within the meaning of the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” he added.
In another round of tweets, Carr accused NBC of scheduling Harris’ SNL appearance “(just hours before an election) in a way that denies all other candidates their one-week procedural right.” This allegedly goes against the FCC’s seven-day rule which “affords qualifying candidates one week to request their Equal Time from the broadcast station.”
On Saturday’s episode of SNL, Kamala Harris made her debut by joining comedian Maya Rudolph — known for her impersonations of the vice president — in a cold open sketch. In the scene, Harris appears on the opposite side of a mirror from Rudolph, who is playing her.
“I’m just here to remind you, you got this, because you can do something your opponent can’t do — you can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, in what appeared to be a subtle jab at Trump, who was seen earlier in the week seemingly struggling to grab the handle of a garbage truck door.
Harris’ SNL appearance comes two weeks after the show’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, said neither of the presidential candidates would appear on the popular sketch comedy show.
“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states, and that becomes really complicated.”
Amid Carr’s claims against Harris’ SNL appearance, an FCC spokesperson told The Hill that the commission “has not made any determination regarding [political] programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”
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