A conservative media watchdog counted every political joke on Saturday Night Live this season and found what most right-of-center viewers already suspected: the NBC sketch show directs the vast majority of its fire at Republicans. The numbers, though, put a finer point on the imbalance than casual observation ever could.
NewsBusters, a conservative media research center, examined the first 19 episodes of the current season and tallied 226 political jokes during the show's "Weekend Update" segment. Of those, 91 percent targeted conservatives. Just 18 jokes, fewer than one per episode, went after Democrats and liberals. Three were classified as nonpartisan. The study was provided to the New York Post, and the Daily Mail reported it had reached out to NBC for comment.
The gap is not subtle. It is a ratio of roughly 11-to-1. And the individual target list tells its own story.
President Donald Trump absorbed 101 of the 226 political jokes, nearly half the total, all by himself. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came in a distant second with 14. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem drew 12. Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson took 11. Former Rep. George Santos rounded out the top five with 10.
No Democrat cracked the top tier. The show's own defenders might note that SNL has always leaned into whoever holds power. The study itself acknowledged that framing: "SNL models their political content based on current events, so current administration officials are typically targeted." But a 91-percent tilt goes well beyond covering the party in power. It suggests a writing room that treats one side of the aisle as comedy material and the other as off-limits.
The Cold Open sketches told a similar story. NewsBusters found that 82 percent of the characters featured in recent Cold Opens were Republicans. The segment, traditionally the show's most high-profile political real estate, has functioned this season as a weekly editorial cartoon aimed almost exclusively rightward.
The specific material cited in the analysis shows a pattern that goes beyond gentle ribbing. On the May 2 episode, comedian Aziz Ansari guest-starred as FBI Director Kash Patel in a mock press conference. His lines leaned hard on incompetence.
"I'm a trailblazer. I'm the first Indian person to suck at their job."
Ansari continued in the same sketch with a follow-up that framed the portrayal in explicitly racial terms.
"Everyone says Indian people are smart, hardworking, incredibly intelligent. I prove without a shadow of a doubt that we can be just as incapable and incompetent as the whites."
In a March episode, the cast built an Oval Office scene around a reported clash between Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, drawing from a New York Times report. Cast member Marcello Hernández played Rubio, and Mike Meyers appeared as Musk. The sketch portrayed Rubio as meek and deferential. Hernández, playing Rubio, delivered the punchline after being insulted: "If you think I'm going to stand here and let you call me that, you're right."
Meanwhile, "Weekend Update" co-host Colin Jost took the podium as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in what the analysis described as a "frat-boy take." Jost, playing Hegseth, delivered a monologue laced with mockery of military operations.
"Now, listen up, dingbats, okay? As you might have seen on our sick a** TikTok, we've been bombing stuff, doing sick air raids. This war has been a movie, specifically the Never Ending Story."
Co-host Michael Che, meanwhile, offered a joke about Trump attending the opening night of Chicago at the Kennedy Center. "President Trump attended the opening night of 'Chicago' at the Kennedy Center, and I think that's cool that the president is going to the theater. I mean, what's the worst that could happen," Che said, a reference that needs no footnote for anyone who knows the Lincoln assassination.
Trump has long been a fixture of NBC's comedy programming. He appeared on the network's own Tonight Show in 2015 for a mirror sketch with Jimmy Fallon. Cast member James Austin Johnson has portrayed Trump on SNL this season, including in the March Oval Office sketch and in an October episode. The show's relationship with the president is long, complicated, and, if the numbers are any guide, overwhelmingly one-directional in its satire.
The study's most telling number may not be the 91 percent aimed at conservatives. It may be the 18 jokes aimed at Democrats across 19 episodes. That averages out to less than one joke per show directed at the party that just lost a presidential election, presided over historically low approval ratings, and produced no shortage of material a comedy writer could mine.
During the Biden administration, cast members Mikey Day and Dana Carvey impersonated the former president. Maya Rudolph returned throughout the 2024 presidential election to portray Kamala Harris. Harris herself guest-starred on the show last November for a mirror sketch with Rudolph, a moment that blurred the line between satire and campaign appearance. Trump, notably, did a similar bit with Fallon years earlier, but the Harris sketch arrived days before a general election.
Since Trump took office, the analysis found, Democrats have been largely absent from SNL's joke targets. The show has not ignored politics, it has simply chosen which politicians deserve the treatment.
None of this is new, exactly. Conservatives have noted the tilt for years. But the NewsBusters study puts specific numbers to the complaint, and those numbers are difficult to explain away as mere topicality. A show that devotes 91 percent of its political humor to one side and 82 percent of its Cold Open characters to mocking members of one party is not simply "following the news." It is making editorial choices, the same kind of choices that newsrooms make about which stories to cover and which to skip.
The difference is that newsrooms at least claim to operate under standards of balance. SNL makes no such claim. It is a comedy show, and comedy has no obligation to be fair. But viewers and advertisers are entitled to see the product for what it is. And what it is, by the show's own output, is a weekly progressive editorial dressed up in sketch format.
The show's recent episodes have also ventured into political territory beyond Washington. Comedian Ramy Youssef stepped in to portray New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a recent episode. Youssef's impression included a line that acknowledged the mayor's political identity head-on: "I know some of you out there are scared about the idea of a young Muslim socialist mayor, so allow me to put you at ease by smiling after every answer in a way that physically hurts my face." Mamdani, for his part, seemed flattered, he later posted a video laughing at Youssef's impression during a FaceTime call.
Cast member Ashley Padilla has also appeared as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in recent Cold Opens, adding another administration figure to the show's regular rotation of conservative targets. The pattern holds across segments, across episodes, and across the full run of the season measured by the study.
The Trump administration has given SNL's writers plenty of colorful figures to work with, from Musk to Hegseth to Patel. That is fair game. But the near-total absence of Democratic targets raises a question the show's producers have never had to answer publicly: Is the ratio a creative choice, or does the writing room simply not see the left as worthy of satire? Either answer says something worth hearing.
Trump himself has remained a frequent subject not just of comedy but of political controversy across multiple fronts, from sharp public exchanges with Supreme Court justices to combative rally speeches. He generates headlines daily. But a comedy institution that finds 101 jokes in one man and fewer than one per episode in the entire opposing party is not punching up or punching down. It is punching in one direction only.
NBC has not publicly responded to the study's findings. The silence is its own kind of answer.
A show that can only see one side as funny has stopped being comedy. It is advocacy with a laugh track, and the audience deserves to know the difference.