Bill Burr is facing criticism from viewers for jokes he made about women in his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live’s post-election show.
Burr hosted Saturday’s (November 9) episode of the long-running NBC sketch series days after Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
“All right ladies, you’re 0 and 2 on this guy,” Burr said, referring to Trump’s victories over Hillary Clinton (in 2016) and Harris. “But you learn more from your losses than your wins. Let’s get into the game tape.”
“Ladies, enough with the pantsuit. OK? It’s not working! Stop trying to have respect for yourselves,” he joked.
“You don’t win the office on policy; you gotta whore it up a little! I’m not saying go full Hooters,” he said. “But find the happy medium between Applebee’s and your dad didn’t stick around. All right? You all know how to get a free drink.”
Burr continued: “I know a lot of ugly women – I mean feminists – don’t want to hear this message. But just tease ‘em a little bit! Make a farmer feel like he has a shot. Swing a state over a little bit!”
On Twitter/X, SNL fans were quick to call the comedian out over his choice of jokes.
“Bill burr calling feminists ‘ugly women’ on the first snl after the election has radicalized me in a level i couldn’t possibly comprehend when i thought i had been radicalized to the highest degree earlier this week,” one person wrote.
Another added: “bill burr just said on saturday night live that women need to ‘w**** it up’ to win the white house and then proceeded to tell a classic ‘feminists are ugly’ joke.
“guess we ARE going back.”
A third added: “Bill Burr calling feminists ‘ugly’ and blaming Asians for spreading diseases isn’t funny.”
Elsewhere in his monologue, Burr joked about getting over the flu recently. “Whenever you have the flu, like Covid, you know you always lay in bed. You try to figure out who gave it to you, just going through this Rolodex of people that coughed on you, sniffled near you, walked by an Asian or something.”
A 2021 study found that anti-Asian hate speech surged by 1,662 percent during the pandemic as conspiracy theories about the virus’ origin were rife.
At the beginning of Saturday’s episode, the full SNL cast sarcastically praised Trump’s victory and debuted a new version of the former president – “hot, jacked Trump” – to avoid being put on his “enemies list.”
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC on Saturdays at 11:30pm EST and on Peacock the following day.
