'Weekend Update' Rips BuzzFeed In Scorching Attack Over 'Fake News'
“Weekend Update” let BuzzFeed have it in a harsh attack on “Saturday Night Live” for what Colin Jost slammed as “fake news.”
BuzzFeed published an explosive report Thursday that said President Donald Trump directed attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about how long Trump was involved in a Moscow real estate project during his campaign. But special counsel Robert Mueller’s office said “descriptions of statements” and the “characterization” of documents and testimony” were “not accurate” in the story. BuzzFeed is standing by its reporting.
“Update” co-anchor Michael Che admonished the publication by deriding its journalism chops. “Look, BuzzFeed, we all think it’s great that you want to help, but this is not what we need from you,” Che sniped. “Y’all are BuzzFeed. You do memes and lists.”
He said BuzzFeed was like the aunt who has roaches and asks what she should bring to dinner every Thanksgiving.
“You say ice ... because we don’t want to be picking ‘raisins’ out of the turkey,” he said. “That’s you, BuzzFeed, you bring the ice. As Dr. King once said: ‘Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you are used to.’ There’s no shame in that. We all play a role.”
Not everyone was happy about the takedown.
Lame weekend update. You go after the Democrats to be fair to both sides of the truth? There is only one side to the truth. Truth is not an opinion. The GOP lies over and over. You lied for them tonight. pic.twitter.com/87GNZVUxLr
— jemfinder (@Jemfinder) January 20, 2019
Truly can't get over that one of the *lead writers* of SNL thought the best angle to go with on a groundbreaking news story was "BuzzFeed shouldn't have bothered." Incredible.
— spookaye ghoul (@ohkayewhatever) January 20, 2019
Check out the “Weekend Update” video above. The section on the BuzzFeed story begins at 2:15.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.