Presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s sad cameo on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend was about as painful as you’d expect. But it reveals much more than just a rehearsed politician’s poor acting chops. That SNL dared have her on at all shows she’s exactly what everyone feared she would be.
SNL always had a liberal bent, but until the past several years it at least made an effort at neutrality: any public figure who did something funny got mocked, no matter who they were. As late as 2016, Donald Trump hosted a pretty funny episode, and the cast remained in good spirits.
Yet the tide had already begun to turn during the Obama era, when the entire corporate media decided it was their job to serve as the administration’s praetorian guard. To be sure, Obama made frequent appearances, but the jokes were never at his expense. The punchlines all centered on how cool he was, how relatable, how in control, how much smarter he was than everyone else in the room. That’s not comedy — it’s hero worship.
Now, the entire Democratic Party receives the same treatment, as Trump gets relegated to the status of undesirable, unwelcome in the polite society of late-night comedy. It may have worked with Obama himself, who despite lying through his teeth, was a smooth talker with an undeniable air of coolness. But it falls flat when Maya Rudolph attempts to rehabilitate an awkward and unlikable Kamala Harris with similar treatment. When comedy becomes very obvious propaganda, it’s no surprise that the show now suffers “record low ratings.”
So the show is increasingly forced to cater to the narrow audience that still enjoys what it’s selling, meaning there’s an entire segment of comedy that SNL just can’t — or won’t — touch. It recently brought on a slew of diversity hires, whose very identities now enjoy the Obama treatment. COVID dictums still remain sacrosanct, and fear mongering over Republican malice and ignorance is a weekly staple. If the show was still funny, it would show vaccine clinics filled with mutants waiting for booster shots, black and female pilots crashing airplanes or have Joe Biden shitting his pants. Alas, SNL is now just MSNBC with a laugh track. (RELATED: SELIP: Is Nikki Haley Gaslighting Republicans?)
All this goes to show they’re just another cog in the corporate media echo chamber. So why would the same ecosystem that constantly reminds us how Republicans are a “threat to democracy” deign to platform the second most prominent Republican as she vies for the nation’s top job? Forget about Trump. Would SNL ever give Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy a cameo? Of course not — they’re dangerous, authoritarian, fascist white supremacists. Haley gets an exception because the media complex knows she’s a Trojan horse.
CRINGE: SNL brought on Nikki Haley to bash Donald Trump
Yeah — she’s totally a Republican and not just another Anti-Trump liberal..
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 4, 2024
In a truly cringe-worthy appearance, the show gives Haley a chance to ask “Donald Trump” some questions during a Republican Town Hall sketch. Haley, playing an audience member, asks Trump, “Why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” before suggesting he “might need a mental competency test” and that he’s far too old and legally compromised to be president.
SNL cast member James Austin Johnson plays Trump as a senile and confused, a rambling bigot whose only complaints about Haley are her gender and Indian ethnicity, while Haley comes off assertive, cool, and collected. “Do you need to borrow some money?” she asks through a smirk.
If it wasn’t clear already, this 60-second cameo removes any lingering doubt: the corporate media desperately wants Haley to be the Republican nominee. They’re willing to platform her and even give her the Obama treatment in order to prop her up. When the establishment talks about “threats to democracy,” it really just means any threat to its own authority and consensus, whether that be on foreign policy, economics and globalization, immigration or cultural issues. Haley isn’t treated as a “threat” in this way because they know there is little daylight between her goals and their own. Wherever they do not overtly agree is no cause for concern — she is a milquetoast approval-hound who can be bullied into submission. (RELATED: ‘People Can Live Any Way They Want’: Nikki Haley Dodges When Asked Straight Up If A Man Can Become A Woman)
Now, it goes too far to say she’s just Hillary Clinton in a Scooby-Doo monster mask, as some on the right contend. Yet she would do more to adhere to the stale dogma of Reagan-Bush era conservatism than she would to chart a continuing and consolidated path forward for Trumpsim. Heavy on foreign intervention and economic privatization with a libertarian proclivity on the cultural front, her rehearsed manner and feminist platitudes show she’s not the street brawler that Republicans demand (and who is sorely needed to wage the existential battles America will face in the coming years). The corporate media knows this — and it’s the only reason they aren’t calling her a Nazi.