Trump says Harris 'copied my routine' on 'SNL'
Former President Trump said Monday that Vice President Harris “copied my routine” in her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” two days earlier.
“She uses everything I do. She uses … even ‘Saturday Night Live,’ they copied,” Trump said at a rally in Reading, Pa. “They copied. Think of that. … 'Oh, she was great.' … They copied my routine.”
“I did it a long time ago,” he continued. “They copied the same routine.”
Back in 2015, on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the former president did a comedy sketch with the host that was somewhat similar to Vice President Harris’s recent appearance in a sketch on "SNL," with both Trump and Harris talking to comedians impersonating them in a mirror.
With comedian Maya Rudolph playing the vice president on Saturday’s "SNL" episode, Harris began her debut on the show on the other side of a mirror from the comedian.
“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, seemingly referring to a video from earlier in the week in which Trump had a hard time grabbing the handle of a garbage truck door.
A commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who is a Trump appointee, claimed Saturday that Harris’s appearance on "SNL" violated the equal time rule, which lets rival candidates ask for equal airtime.
“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Commissioner Brendan Carr posted on the social platform X in response to a post from The Associated Press about Harris being on the show that night.
“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,” Carr continued.
Due to a request from the Trump campaign, NBC allotted, following regulatory obligations, equal time to the GOP presidential candidate. During a NASCAR broadcast Sunday evening, NBC aired a video message from Trump in an effort to give the candidates equal airtime in the wake of Harris’s ‘SNL’ appearance.
The Hill has reached out to the Harris campaign and NBC.
This story was updated at 10:55 a.m.