SNL’s Kamala Harris cameo might have violated fairness rules

Kamala Harris’s appearance on Saturday Night Live just days before America votes may have been a violation of election rules.

The vice president poked fun at Donald Trump as she made the surprise cameo on the comedy show this weekend as the rivals enter the final stage of their White House campaigns.

Harris, who has been played on the 50th season of the comedy show by Maya Rudolph, appeared in a sketch with the actress after flying to New York City on her way to campaign in Michigan.

Now a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, a government agency that regulates radio and television in the US, says the appearance may have violated its “equal time” rule.

The criticism came from Brendan Carr, a Republican who was nominated by both Donald Trump and Joe Biden to the FCC’s five-member commission.

He wrote on Elon Musk’s X, that the SNL cold open was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.”

“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,” he stated. “Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns.”

Harris’s appearance came as a surprise as in October, the show’s creator Lorne Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter that SNL had not approached any candidate and had no plans to do so.

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Michaels said of the FCC’s rules on equal time for candidates.

“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 senior adviser Jason Miller told the Associated Press on Saturday he was surprised Harris would appear on the show, which he said had not been flattering towards her.

Asked if Trump had been invited to go on SNL, he told AP, “I don’t know. Probably not.”

It is not the first time that the show has had heavyweight political guests make cameo appearances.

In 2007, President Barack Obama, who was then a candidate appeared on the show, hidden to begin with under a Halloween mask. Hillary Clinton, who was also a candidate that year, also made a cameo.

Sarah Palin, who was the vice president candidate on John McCain’s ticket, appeared weeks before the election.

Donald Trump hosted the show in 2015 as a candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2016 election, which he went on to win.