SNL's Weekend Update Roasts Elon Musk Over His Midterms Defeat

Elon Musk got the Saturday Night Live treatment after the midterm elections, with a cast member playing him on the show's news-satire desk. Variety reported on the sketch, which aired in the show's most recent episode.

Jeremy Culhane, a featured player on the show, took on the role. Featured players are performers on the supporting end of the cast, and Weekend Update is the segment where anchors deliver jokes about the week's news as if reading a bulletin.

Colin Jost, the Weekend Update anchor, played the straight man. In the sketch he told the Musk character that he had wasted half a billion dollars on the midterms. Jost then moved on to Tesla's decision to halt production of the Cybertruck, the company's electric pickup.

The sketch was built as a roast of Musk over his midterm election defeat. In one of its sharpest beats, Musk was mocked by his own Grok AI, the chatbot he has promoted through his companies. The bit turned the tables so the AI did the teasing.

For viewers, this is comedy, not reporting. Weekend Update uses real news as its raw material and then exaggerates it for laughs. The sketch gives no new figures beyond the half-billion-dollar line, and it does not say how that number was calculated.

Musk has been a regular target of late-night and weekend comedy for years, and the sketch fits that pattern. A cast member playing a public figure is a long-running staple of the show. Saturday Night Live airs weekly, so the next episode will bring a new round of news-based jokes.

The episode is a reminder of how the show works. A single segment can take a week's headlines, give them a punchline and a costume, and reach a large audience in one night. For a comedy show, that is the whole job.