SNL’s Weekend Update Mocks Trump’s Baseless Wiretapping Claims Against Obama

On Saturday morning, the nation once again awoke to a series of curious Twitter fanfic from the president of the United States. Yes, at 6:35 a.m., while his minders Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were presumably busy observing Shabbat, President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the election. “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” he tweeted to his 26 million followers.

Trump, as is his wont, provided zero evidence backing the claim, and the White House refrained from providing any sort of public explanation. Given the president’s past history of repeating dubious claims he’s seen on Fox News or read on the pro-Trump agitprop site Breitbart, some online speculated that Trump got the idea from a Breitbart story aggregating a spurious claim made by right-wing radio host Mark Levin—a “Never Trump-er” who chose partisanship over country.

The tweetstorm likely threw Saturday Night Live’s plan into disarray, since the late-night sketch comedy program was airing live later that evening. Nonetheless, co-anchor Michael Che took on the controversy during the show’s Weekend Update segment.

“Well, this Saturday morning while his nurse was at temple, Grandpa shuffled out of his room and got into his Twitter again,” said Che. “Without offering any evidence in a series of tweets, Donald Trump accused former President Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the election.”

He even tweeted the following:

“Dude, you’re the president of the United States and you’re seeking legal advice on Twitter? That’s like your doctor tweeting out, ‘Hey, does this look infected?’” joked Che.

“But this is a very serious allegation for a sitting president to make about his predecessor,” Che added, “and you know that it’s very serious because his next tweet was, ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t voluntarily leaving the apprentice, he was fired by his bad ratings.’”

It took the president of the United States a little over an hour to move on from accusing the former president of a Watergate-level scandal to firing off a petty jab at Arnold Schwarzenegger over his failed Apprentice stint—a reality TV competition program Trump used to host, and still receives royalties from as an executive producer.

“This guy’s train of thought is just baffling,” Che remarked. “He’s like that crazy dude on the subway yelling, ‘They’re tapping my phones! Schwarzenegger sucks! I can lick my own elbow!’ Donald, just forget about The Apprentice! You’re the president now. You’re the executive producer of the free world. It’s a much more important show and your ratings are dead last.”

Che then threw to a graphic of past presidents’ approval ratings after one month in office. Indeed, Trump was last with a 40 percent approval rating, trailing behind Bill Clinton’s 51 percent.