FCC Commissioner Raises Concerns Over ‘Equal Time Rule’ After Harris ‘SNL’ Appearance

Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) and actress Maya Rudolph participate in "Saturday Night Live" at NBC studios in New York on Nov. 2, 2024. Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in the final days before the Nov. 5 election, playing herself as the mirror-image double of Maya Rudolph’s version of her in the show’s cold open.

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner on Sunday said that the Democratic presidential candidate’s “SNL” appearance may have violated the agency’s rule about equal time being given to candidates.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote on the social platform X late on Saturday night.

“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 wrote in the post.

The Epoch Times contacted the Harris campaign and NBC for comment on Sunday. Neither her campaign nor Trump’s campaign have publicly responded to Carr’s statement.

In a subsequent post on X, Carr wrote that former President Barack Obama’s FCC chairman had “made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on ‘SNL’” in 2015.

“NBC stations publicly filed Equal Opportunity notices to ensure that all other qualifying candidates could obtain Equal Time if they sought it. Stations did the same thing when [Hillary] Clinton appeared on SNL,” Carr wrote.

He added that he believes NBC may have “structured this appearance in a way that evades these requirements.”

Harris made the surprise trip to New York City with the election imminent, briefly stepping away from the battleground states where she’s been campaigning in favor of NBC’s iconic sketch comedy show, where she could potentially appeal to a nationwide audience.

In the “SNL” appearance, the first lines the candidate spoke as she sat across from Rudolph, their outfits identical, were drowned out by cheers from the audience. “It is nice to see you Kamala,” Harris told Rudolph with a broad grin she kept throughout the sketch. “And I’m just here to remind you, you got this.”

In sync, the two said supporters need to “Keep Kamala and carry-on-ala,” declared that they share each other’s “belief in the promise of America,” and delivered the signature “Live from New York it’s Saturday night!”

Rudolph first played Harris on the show in 2019 and has reprised her role this season, doing an impression of the vice president. Her fellow former cast member Andy Samberg appeared again Saturday night as Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, standup comic Jim Gaffigan played running mate Tim Walz, and longtime alum Dana Carvey again played President Joe Biden.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, expressed surprise that Harris would appear on “SNL” given what he described as her unflattering portrayal on the show. Asked if Trump had been invited to appear, he said: “I don’t know. Probably not.”

Earlier this year, Lorne Michaels, the longtime executive producer of “SNL,” told a reporter that neither Trump nor Harris would appear on the sketch comedy show during the 2024 election.

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in mid-September. “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.”

Both Trump and Harris are slated to make multiple campaign stops and hold several rallies in the waning days of the election, which will be held Tuesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.