Saturday Night Live UK zinged President Donald Trump with a joke about his age while reacting to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting.
“For all those in attendance it was an undeniably terrifying event,” Weekend Update cohost Ania Magliano began on Saturday, May 2 (via Deadline). “President Trump s*** himself. Minutes later the shots rang out.”
Us Weekly has reached out to the White House for comment.
The latest SNL UK episode — hosted by The White Lotus’ Aimee Lou Wood and featuring music from MEEK — opened with another Trump joke as part of a sketch where King Charles III (Larry Dean) and Queen Camilla (Emma Sidi) congratulated themselves on a successful state visit to the U.S.
“There’s no way Donald Trump will do anything weird or bad ever again,” the Queen quipped.
SNL UK’s Weekend Update joke about Trump’s age follows on the heels of Jimmy Kimmel facing controversy for a joke he told on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on April 23. As part of a faux-White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast, Kimmel said that first lady Melania Trump had a “glow like an expectant widow.”
Two days later, Cole Tomas Allen allegedly opened fire at the Washington Hilton’s security checkpoint while the Trumps, Vice President JD Vance and other officials were attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner inside the main ballroom. A Secret Service officer was struck in his protective vest and transported to a local hospital for treatment.
Allen, 31, was apprehended during the incident and subsequently charged with one count of attempting to assassinate the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony, and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, per the Justice Department. He has not yet entered a plea.
On Monday, April 27, both Melania, 56, and Donald, 79, released separate statements calling for Kimmel to be fired by ABC for the “expectant widow” joke he told two days before the shooting.
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country,” Melania tweeted. “His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate.”
Kimmel addressed the calls for his firing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that same night, insisting that he’d been joking about Donald’s age, not making “a call to assassination.”
“This [joke] was Thursday. There was no big reaction to it, until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm and a call to fire me from our first lady, Melania Trump, saying I should be fired because of a joke I made, again, five nights ago. It was a pretend roast,” he told viewers on Monday.
The comedian went on, “It obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they’re together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination, and they know that. I’ve been very vocal for many years, speaking out against gun violence, but I understand that the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house.”
The president has kept up his calls for ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel Live! while the late-night host has received unlikely support from Republican Senator Ted Cruz and conservative commentator Candace Owens. Kimmel has since pointed out that Trump made a joke about his old age during the royal state visit this week.
Saturday Night Live UK continues on Sky 1 in the U.K. Saturday, May 9, with host Hannah Waddingham and music from Myles Smith. New episodes can be streamed on Peacock in the U.S.
