‘SNL’ cold open mocks Biden war strategy, featuring TikTok stars giving their best advice
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The Biden administration has been inundated with intense mockery over the recruitment of TikTok influencers to promote its propaganda on the Ukraine crisis in an election year, an idea that is so bad that it was even lampooned by the cast of Saturday Night Live.
During the latest edition of the long-running NBC late-night flagship, the cold open skewered the effort by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to get the regime’s message out using the Chinese social media platform after she summoned 30 top influencers to a briefing on Thursday, a session in which she pushed the false claim that Russia had “hacked” the 2016 election, a top excuse for why Hillary Clinton’s loss.
Opening with a crawl explaining that Russia has cut off access to social media platforms Facebook and Instagram as the showdown with the west over the invasion of Ukraine has intensified and that TikTok was the only remaining source of outside information.
The segment featured James Austin Johnson as Biden who was meeting with a half dozen cast members portraying a diverse collection of TikTok influencers who are sitting on two sofas in the White House along with Psaki who was played by Kate McKinnon.
(Video: YouTube/SNL)
After thanking the influencers” for “answering your nation’s call in a time of need,” Johnson’s Biden also expressed gratitude to his press secretary for setting up the meeting.
“I suggested it as a joke and then it actually happened,” said McKinnon.
“People are saying this is the first war fought on TikTok which is tough for me because I’m the land line of presidents, that’s why I need you , okay,” Johnson said, falling into Biden’s creepy whispering voice.
“I understand Putin, I understand war, but there’s one thing I don’t understand, computer,” he said, as McKinnon explained, “He means technology but he says computer.”
Then the other cast members are given an opportunity for input on how to “win the information war on social media” leading to a variety of silly suggestions that would be comical if the skit wasn’t based on the reality of the real Psaki’s meeting with the 30 popular content creators.
Later, the audience erupted when a topless Bowen Yang entered as “a guy who does a bunch of insane tricks using a toilet plunger stuck to my nipples.”
It isn’t the first time that the administration has enlisted TikTok personalities, it also did so back in August to assist in pushing Biden’s mass vaccination drive, pegging the cringe meter with one video that featured Benito Skinner, aka Benny Drama, a young man with a serious case of gender confusion, and featured a guest appearance from Psaki in an ad that brought down a torrent of ridicule.
During her meeting with the actual influencers, Psaki said, “The best antidote to disinformation is the truth. And one of the big steps we’ve taken, and made a decision to make, is declassify information over the course of the last several months.”
She also told the group, “If you look back at 2014, and frankly even 2016, when Russia invaded Ukraine and then in 2016, when they, you know, of course, hacked our election here, we did not do that, we did not declassify information,”
That the administration feels that its now necessary to resort to using TikTok influencers to sway potential voters is a sign of how truly desperate that the Democrats are in what could be a watershed election year.
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