NBC on Sunday filed notice that the broadcast network had provided Donald Trump equal time to Kamala Harris’s surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live, by providing him a chance to directly address voters following a Nascar race.
A US government communications regulator had claimed that Harris’s surprise appearance on the comedy program violated “equal time” rules that govern political programming. Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), had called Harris’s appearance “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule”.
Carr made the claim in response to an Associated Press alert to 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,” said Carr, who was nominated by both Trump and Biden and confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.
FCC guidelines state: “Equal opportunities generally means providing comparable time and placement to opposing candidates; it does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate.”
A spokesperson for the FCC issued a statement: “The FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules, nor have we received a complaint from any interested parties.”
The “equal time” rule mandates that US television and radio broadcast outlets give equal access to competing political hopefuls. This requirement does not extend to cable television networks, such as Fox News, nor does it apply to content such as social media or podcasts.
“Equal time” is often conflated with the Fairness Doctrine, a federal policy that was scrapped in 1987 and had required that broadcasters handle issues of public interest with the presentation of opposing views.
Harris joined the comedian Maya Rudolph at the start of the show in a sketch that skewered Donald Trump for his recent rally speeches, including wearing an orange and yellow safety jacket, a riff on the ongoing garbage controversy, and pretending to fellate a broken microphone.
Harris began her “mirror image” sketch opposite Rudolph, the SNL cast member selected to impersonate her, on the other side of a mirror.
“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 struggled to reach the handle of a garbage truck he briefly rode in to a Wisconsin rally.
That came after a comedian at a Trump rally in New York made a joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” that was widely deemed racist. Trump disavowed the comedian but did not apologize.
On a video call to Latino voters, Joe Biden appeared to call Trump supporters garbage. The White House later denied he had and released a transcript with “supporters” altered to “supporter’s”, changing the meaning. White House stenographers appealed against the alteration.
“The American people want to stop the chaos,” Rudolph said in the SNL sketch, with Harris adding, “And end the drama-la.”
“With a cool new step mom-ala. Get back in our pajama-las. And watch a rom-com-ala,” Rudolph said, with the two later touting their “belief in the promise of America”.
Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of SNL, which is celebrating its 50th season on NBC, told the Hollywood Reporter in September that neither Harris or Trump would themselves appear on the show.
“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Michaels told the outlet.
“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.”
In the interview, Michaels said Republicans were easier to characterize than Democrats who have been offended by certain skits.
“It’s not personal in the sense of an attack, it’s just, you did say that and you did do that, so were you thinking it would be rude for us to comment on it? That’s what we do, and we’re going to do it again,” he said.
The Trump campaign complained about Harris’s appearance, saying Harris “has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity”, a spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Fox News Digital.
Brian Stelter, CNN’s media analyst, reported on Sunday that NBC stations were giving Trump equal time under FCC mandates. “A direct-to-camera appeal from Trump to ‘go and vote’ aired during this evening’s NASCAR post-race show,” Stelter noted.
“We’re two days away from the most important election in the history of our country,” Trump told the public, in an address which also made wild claims. Among the eyebrow-raising statements was the comment: “We’re going to end up in a depression based on what’s been happening.”
Some viewers also noted that Harris’s “mirror image” comedy sketch was conceptually identical to a sketch Trump featured in with the ex-SNL comedian Jimmy Fallon on Fallon’s the Tonight Show in 2015. “I knew that SNL sketch with Kamala Harris looked familiar …” the radio host Ari Hoffman said in an Instagram post linking to the Fallon-Trump skit.
Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:
How the electoral college works
Lessons from the key swing states
What’s at stake in this election
