“Saturday Night Live” focused on Dominion Voting Systems’ ongoing defamation lawsuit against Fox News for the cold open this week, and unfortunately, the fake “Fox & Friends” hosts couldn’t keep their lawsuit details straight. As a result, Heidi Gardner’s Ainsley Earhardt mistook Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch for convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh.
To kick off the episode, Mikey Day, Gardner and Bowen Yang returned as Fox News hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade, respectively, first complaining about being in New York, a Democrat-run city. But things quickly turned to the ongoing suit against the network, with the hosts acknowledging recent testimony from Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch, admitting that some Fox News hosts knowingly touted election lies on-air.
Yang’s Kilmeade admitted he was surprised by the conflict, noting that he loves “da minions,” referring to the yellow babbling creatures from “Despicable Me.” Day’s Doocy quickly corrected him, only for Earhardt to make the bigger mixup.
“This whole trial has been so unfair!” she whined. “They are raking him over the coals. Rupert Murdoch would never murder anyone!”
Doocy was obviously confused, but she continued, saying, “They sent him away for life! Look how sad he looks” — before pulling up a photo of Alex Murdaugh, who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife and son.
When Earhardt had the mistake explained to her, she gasped loudly, excitedly calling out, “Well, we just blew the case wide open, they got the wrong guy!”
The hosts then touched on why Fox News isn’t covering the lawsuit much on-air, with Yang’s Kilmeade guessing that it’s because they’re being sued for $1.6 billion. But according to Doocy, that wasn’t it at all.
“No, it’s ’cause it’s complete BS,” he said. “The media is taking private texts from Fox hosts and showing them completely out of context.”
So, he offered some of the “real” context of the messages revealed by Dominion. For example, Sean Hannity’s texts, including one calling Sidney Powell a “f—ing lunatic” were apparently “all sent in response to Laura Ingraham’s text, ‘What should I put in my tinder bio?’”
Indeed, in response to the texts revealed by Dominion, Fox filed an amended counterclaim, and a network spokesperson said that Dominion “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context.”
“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners,” Fox News said in a real statement about the lawsuit. “But the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.”
You can watch some of the “SNL” cold open in the video above.