Marco Rubio Fumes About Kamala Harris SNL Cameo, Claims It Was ‘In Violation of the Law’

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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) fumed about Vice President Kamala Harris’s cameo on Saturday Night Live in his speech at a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump on Sunday, claiming the appearance was “in violation of the law” and mocking her laugh.

Harris joined Maya Rudolph for the show’s cold open Saturday evening, participating in a routine the show has deployed before where one actor pretends to face a mirror with another actor portraying the reflection. In this case, Rudolph’s portrayal of Harris was joined by the vice president herself. The short appearance included Harris cracking jokes about Trump struggling to open the door of a garbage truck and taking some ribbing from Rudolph about her laugh.

Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner who was appointed by Trump to the Federal Communications Commission’s five-person governing body, blasted Harris’s cameo and claimed it was a “clear and blatant effort to violate the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”

Harris was on screen for 90 seconds, meaning that Trump was entitled to a similar amount of time, and NBC affiliate stations posted notices of the free airtime. As Deadline’s Ted Johnson reported, “The FCC rules do not require that a network seek out opposing campaigns to offer the time. The rival candidates have to request it.” Johnson also noted:

It’s also not unprecedented for the show to feature a presidential nominee so close to an election. John McCain made a cameo on SNL the weekend before the 2008 campaign.

Stations do not have to give opposing candidates identical time, just comparable time. After Trump hosted SNL in 2015, some of his GOP primary rivals were given airtime not on the show, but in a similar time period on stations with upcoming primaries.

The situation was swiftly resolved when NBC ran a Trump ad during a NASCAR race and the Sunday Night Football postgame show, together totaling the 90 seconds of airtime Harris got. The unorthodox ad featured Trump speaking directly to the camera to “sports fans” and urging them to vote in the “most important election in the history of our country.”

Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt pushed back on Carr’s claims, writing in his own post that Carr was “wrong” — using Carr’s own words against him to accuse him of “clearly and blatantly trying to help Trump campaign.”

Rubio nonetheless complained about Harris’s SNL appearance being “in violation of the law,” an accusation that might hold more water if the stations had not properly filed their notices of the free time and then granted a similar quantity of time to Trump.

The Florida Senator made the comments as part of a complaint about a “full scale effort to do everything you possibly can” by “virtually every major media outlet in America,” to “depress and suppress Republican votes and Trump voters.”

Harris went to SNL, “by the way, in violation of the law,” Rubio claimed. “I hope she laughed on Saturday Night Live in front of millions of people, just heard her laughing for a few minutes, because that’s probably worth 2-3 million votes right there.”

Watch the video clips  above.

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Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law & Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Bluesky and Threads.