by Saturday Night Live sent its Weekend Update team of Michael Che and Colin Jost out to Cleveland to help MSNBC’s coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention with a special live midnight edition of their newsy joke segment tonight.
But Kate McKinnon made an appearance, too, and quickly reasserted herself as the star attraction worth watching with her dancing, fighting impersonation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Roll the clip!
Che also starred in a topical sketch playing off the insanely popular cell-phone scavenger hunt game, Pokémon GO, with a parody version trying to find “rare” minorities within the RNC base at Quicken Loans Arena, Trumpémon GO.
As for the jokes, Che and Jost had some of them, too. So many Scott Baio jokes. If only they had a larger, livelier audience to play to than just the handful of MSNBC crew still hanging around the arena. Here’s the full 12-minute segment of Weekend Update as it aired. Roll it!
Oh, wait. Sweet Jesus. You have to see what happened when Che and Jost stuck around to talk with MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews. About halfway through, Matthews asks them about the many different police departments walking around Cleveland, then asks Che who the “funniest black guy” is now. As Jost howls in delight at the scandalous nature of the question, Che tries to immediately defuse it by offering “I’m going to say Cosby so nobody gets mad at you. Now that’ll be the headline.” Matthews then says something about “say nothing bad about the dead,” and the comedy duo, clearly puzzled, gets a follow-up from Matthews: “You know what I mean.” Do they, though? Do we? Matthews also wonders whether Chris Christie has a funny name or is merely funny because he’s fat. Why is Jost from Staten Island? So many questions, Matthews has. So many theories. “I don’t know if you’re trying to get us laid or killed!” Jost exclaimed by the end of it all.
Stay tuned to see what Che and Jost do next Wednesday night on MSNBC from Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention — and which SNL stars might join them.
