Kamala Harris SNL appearance flagged by FCC commissioner for violating "equal time" rule

New York, New York - Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harris and NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) got slammed by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulator Brendan Carr over an alleged violation of "equal time" rules.

Kamala Harris and Saturday Night Live got slammed by the FCC over an alleged violation of the government regulator's "equal time" rules.
Kamala Harris and Saturday Night Live got slammed by the FCC over an alleged violation of the government regulator's "equal time" rules.  © Roberto SCHMIDT / AFP

Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said in an X post that Harris' recent appearance on SNL "is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule."

According to Carr, "The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct – a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns."

Carr, who was nominated for the position by both Trump and Joe Biden, was confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times.

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Per FCC guidelines, "Equal opportunities generally means providing comparable time and placement to opposing candidates; it does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate."

Kamala Harris appeared in a "mirror image" sketch opposite comedian Maya Rudolph in a bit that has since been called out for its similarity to a skit from Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show in 2015 that featured Trump and ex-SNL castmate Jimmy Fallon.

SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels formerly said neither candidate would appear on the show

The executive producer of SNL Lorne Michaels assured the Hollywood Reporter in September that neither Trump nor Harris would be coming onto SNL.

"You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions," Michaels said.

"You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated."

Trump's campaign bristled at the Harris cameo, with spokesperson Steven Cheung telling Fox News that the Democrat "has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity."

Cover photo: Roberto SCHMIDT / AFP

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