Trump Denies Asking Federal Government To Stop 'Saturday Night Live' From Mocking Him

A report says that former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Justice Department to look into possible punishments against late-night shows for mocking him in their comedy skits, but he has denied the claim as “fake news.”

The Daily Beast, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that Trump “asked White House aides in 2019 to see if the Federal Communications Commission, U.S. courts, and the Justice Department could investigate SNL, Jimmy Kimmel Live and other shows after they mocked him in their comedy skits.”

However, the former president later called The Daily Beast’s report “fabricated” and “fake news.”

“The story that I asked the Department of Justice to go after ratings challenged (without Trump) Saturday Night Live, and other late night losers, is total Fake News. It was fabricated, there were no sources, and yet the Lamestream Media goes with it,” Trump said in a statement, according to Deadline.

The sources cited by The Daily Beast said Trump “grew immediately incensed” in March 2019 after watching an episode of SNL in which he was “gently mocked.” The former commander-in-chief then took to Twitter to voice his displeasure with the NBC comedy series.

“It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side,’” Trump had stated in a tweet. It was deleted later.

“Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows. Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this?”

In his tweets, Trump had also slammed Alec Baldwin, who portrayed him on the long-running comedy series, saying the actor had “no talent, certainly when it comes to imitating me.”

“The one who had what it took was Darrell Hammond,” he had said.

The Daily Beast report also cited the sources as saying that White House aides had to “repeatedly advise the former president that the shows are staged satire and are thus not required to follow the equal-time rules that require stations to give political candidates equal airtime on non-news programming.”

This report comes a week after House lawmakers released a series of emails from December that showed Trump “making attempts to use the DOJ to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” according to The Business Insider.