Saturday Night Live’s cold open showing Donald Trump sitting on a toilet during the January 6 hearings earned a familiar rebuke from the former president.
Mr Trump once again took to his social media platform Truth Social to attack the show’s poor ratings, claim it was on the verge of being cancelled, and suggest creator Lorne Michaels was “angry and exhausted”.
“It was once good, never great, but now like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL - A great thing for America,” he wrote this week.
In its latest episode, SNL lampooned the January 6 House Select Committee hearings while also mocking the former president.
Featured player James Austin Johnson portrayed Mr Trump in a rambling phone conversation while answering a call of nature.
“Is Mike Pence dead yet?” the actor asks, while suggesting Apollo Creed died because of Obamacare.
Mr Trump has frequently been a target of late night comedy shows and comedians. In 2019, then-President Trump called for “retribution” against SNL after the sketch comedy show parodied the Russian collusion investigation.
In kicking off his latest rant, Mr Trump boasted of his own ratings when hosting the show as a presidential candidate in 2015, when he drew 16 million viewers.
After a host of high profile cast departures, the 48th season of SNL does appear to be struggling to attract viewers. Saturday’s overnight ratings came in at a modest 3.72 million, not including streams and social media views, more than one million down from the season premier.
Mr Trump claimed the show needs to be “put to rest” after declaring: “I once hosted Saturday Night Live, and the ratings were HUUUGE! Now, however, the ratings are lower than ever before, and the show will probably be put to ‘rest.’ It is just not, at these levels, sustainable - A bad show that’s not funny or smart.”
The SNL cold open also showed Chloe Fineman as a “bad ass” Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Sherman as a befuddled Chuck Schumer trying to redirect a Doordash delivery while hunkered down in the basement of the US Capitol.
