'SNL' Knew About Joe Biden All Along
The president's mental condition was no secret to comedy writers.
In one Saturday Night Live sketch mocking a Democratic presidential debate, George Stephanopoulos, played by cast member Mikey Day, tells Joe Biden, played by Jason Sudeikis, “you have 60 seconds.”
“But the doctor said I had six to eight months!” answered Sudeikis’ Biden.
That was February 8, 2020.
If you have turned on a television in the past week, you have been inundated with finger pointing over who knew what as Biden faded out of the 2024 presidential election. Some Democrats blame Biden’s handlers for “covering up” his deteriorating mental condition, leading to his horrific crash in the final debate with Donald Trump. (To add to the controversy, Biden this week announced he had been diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer that had spread to the bone.)
As a new book by CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson argues, Biden’s decision to run for re-election last year undoubtedly handed the presidency to Trump. Even after Biden dropped out of the race, Democrats handed the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris, who had an even lower approval rating than Biden. It was virtually impossible for her to run a plausible presidential campaign in three months.
But even as Biden’s enablers swore up and down that the president spent his free time using his immense cranial powers to solve the mystery of cold fusion, the American public didn’t buy it. Discussing Biden’s age and cognitive abilities was a third rail for much of the media, but voters could see with their own eyes what was happening to Biden as he stammered through speeches and moved as any 80-year-old man would.
Much of comedy is saying the truths nobody else will say, and in this case, Saturday Night Live was screaming about Biden’s condition for a half a decade. Both in sketches and in Weekend Update jokes, SNL tried to warn everyone about what was happening.
Take this joke from Weekend Update Colin Jost in October of 2019:
“Joe Biden for the first time called for President Trump to be impeached and removed from office after he finally realized that the Joe Biden Trump keeps attacking was him.”
Or this Sudeikis joke from December of 2019 while playing Biden in a debate sketch: “Have you noticed I’m playing with almost a full deck of cards tonight? I haven’t even told a long, rambling story yet - but I got one locked and loaded.”
The show dedicated some full sketches to Biden’s mental condition. In October of 2021, with Sudeikis hosting, they opened the show with a sketch about how far Biden’s faculties had diminished since Sudeikis played him as vice president on the show. When modern Biden sees former Biden, he remarks that he can’t believe how “lucid” he is.
In 2022, a fake movie trailer presents Biden’s decision to run for re-election as a horror flick. The film shows cast member Punkie Johnson adding up Biden’s age on her computer calculator, then recoiling in horror as she realizes he will be 81 years old in 2024:
At the end, the characters all settle on Biden after considering the other potential Democratic candidates, which ended up predicting what was actually going to happen in two years.
In fact, between 2019 and 2023, the jokes about Biden’s mental acuity were all over SNL. Here’s a non-exhaustive list:
Season 45, Episode 15 (March 2020): Jost jokes that he can’t wait for the Trump-Biden debates because they are going to have to be the first debates “moderated by a Jamaican nurse.”
Season 46, Episode 9 (December 2020): Jost jokes that Dr. Jill Biden isn’t actually a medical doctor, but “she has at times functioned as a nurse” as they show a picture of her holding up Joe. The crowd groans loudly at this one.
Season 46, Episode 15 (March 2021): After Biden gave a one-hour press conference, he was asked if he plans on running in 2024. Weekend Update co-host Michael Che joked: “Which is probably the nicest way to ask him if he plans on being alive in three years.”
During the press conference, Biden used a “cheat sheet.” Jost joked that he had an exclusive look at one of them, which said, “YOU = JOE BIDEN.”
Season 46, Episode 18 (May 2021): It had been announced that Kamala Harris was getting her own wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s. Che added, “while Joe Biden is the first wax figure to become president.”
Season 47, Episode 4 (October 2021): A report had come out that Biden repeatedly used the “F” word behind the scenes in meetings. Jost joked: “More concerning, the F word he keeps using is ‘forget.’”
Season 47, Episode 12 (January 2022): A new study showed the economy rising at the fastest rate since the Ronald Reagan administration. Jost: “Biden has even started using Reagan’s catchphrase, ‘Where am I?’”
(During this time, the Weekend Update desk began wearing out this photo of Biden looking confused):
Season 47, Episode 18 (April 2022): After Biden finished a speech, he turned to shake hands with an invisible person. Jost: “Hey, her name is Kamala.”
Season 48, Episode 1 (October 2022): In a sketch lampooning ESPN’s “ManningCast,” Peyton Manning (played by host Miles Teller) says, “Joe Biden’s lost his marbles. They’re not even going to mention that?”
Later that episode, during Weekend Update, Jost mentioned a speech Biden had given earlier in the week when he asked if Congresswoman Jackie Walorski was in the crowd - but she had died a month earlier. “Even worse, he keeps forgetting this woman is still alive” Jost said as he pointed to a picture of Kamala Harris.
Season 48, Episode 2 (October 2022): In a sketch called “So You Think You Won't Snap!,” game show host “Morgan Freegirl” (played by Bowen Yang) reads current headlines. “Did you know that when Joe Biden was born, we didn’t have highways?” he asks Heidi Gardner’s character. He shows a clip of Biden on 60 Minutes discussing his mental acuity, which leads Heidi Gardner’s character to chug wine.
On Weekend Update, Jost showed a clip of Biden giving a speech at a car factory in which the president opened with, “Let me start off with two words: Made in America.” Jost, looking nonplussed, said, “Let me respond with two words: ‘Jesus H. Christ.’”
Jost then then noted Biden had gotten upset when reporters yelled questions at him. He then added, “Questions like, ‘what year is it,’ and ‘who is the current president?’”
Season 48, Episode 5 (November 2022): James Austin Johnson, playing Biden, notes that he is often seen talking to people who don’t exist.
Season 48, Episode 7 (December 2022): Biden had just forced railway workers to accept a deal that doesn’t include paid sick leave. On Weekend Update, Che joked: “But how do you expect to care about sick leave when he shows up to work every day with full-blown CTE?”
And yet despite all of Biden’s difficulties being mocked week after week, his cognitive decline still snuck up on a lot of political observers. One of the unfortunate byproducts of having a media so in the tank for one of the candidates is that people look to comedians to tell them the truth.
In this case, it was entirely warranted.
ALSO:
This week in National Review, I looked at how Biden’s decision to run for re-election robbed us of the post-presidency second act, which is an American tradition:
America used to elect presidents young enough that, when they left office, they still had decades of public service ahead of them that they could use to burnish their legacies. Take George W. Bush, who exited office at age 62: Who knew that a man whom the left once burned in effigy as a war criminal would one day become America’s lovable uncle? Bill Clinton was only 54 when he left the presidency, and despite his many scandals and impeachment, he has spent years as an A-list public figure. Sure, the bitter-enders will never admit that they may have gotten a little carried away during an opposing president’s tenure, but most Americans forgive, forget, and welcome their former nemeses back to civilian life. (Think of the Democrats when they retroactively realized that, as bad as they thought George W. Bush was, they had no idea what horrors lay on the horizon. “We thought that guy was Hitler?!”)
But America’s newfound enthusiasm for gerontocracy — Biden left office at 82, and at the end of his term, Trump will be 82 — reduces the chances of having ex-presidents around. What we do know is that Joe Biden will likely not have a post-presidency career in which he paints pictures of veterans for charity. He almost certainly will not spend decades building homes for the poor or producing films for Netflix.
The prior week, I wrote about how we are all outsourcing our brains to artificial intelligence, which is making us boring, awkward, and dumb:
The day is certainly coming when people will just be too lazy to interact online, an activity that just a few years ago was itself considered lazy. Dating websites are already rolling out AI “wingmen” that write dating profiles for people, then contact other users on their behalf. We are in the age of Cyrano de Zuckerberg. (Whatever happens, do not give Roxane your credit card number.)
But as the quality of AI gets even better, so will the temptation to simply offload all your thinking to the algorithm. Why go through the painstaking process of acquiring social etiquette, figuring out how to fix things around the house, and learning to read and write when it can all be done for you with a voice command? Becoming a fully formed human is difficult. Why not export all the challenging work to your own digital Jeeves?
FINALLY:
Is it strange that a man in his 50s enjoys music written for women in their 20s? Perhaps - but when you can write songs as catchy as Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio does, it’s bound to happen. (Plus, Bob Odenkirk is a big fan, so I am in good company.)