SNL cold open slays Fox News over Dominion defamation lawsuit

Saturday Night Live’s cold open went after Fox News over its conspicuous silence about damning revelations in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems.

Internal communications and sworn depositions in the court battle have revealed that Fox’s star anchors and executives knew that Donald Trump’s false 2020 election fraud claims were bogus.

Since the allegations were made public in unsealed court filings last week, Fox News has barely acknowledged them.

SNL’s cold open on 4 March featured a Fox & Friends spoof with cast members Mikey Day as Steve Doocy, Heidi Gardner as Ainsley Earhardt and Bowen Yang as Brian Kilmeade.

The hosts began by discussing why the lawsuit hasn’t been attracting much coverage on the rightwing network.

“Rupert Murdoch admitted that Fox News aired election fraud conspiracies to get ratings, even though everyone at Fox knew they were false,” Day says.

Yang, as Kilmeade, responds, saying: “I didn’t. Loop a brother in next time,”

“Now you may be wondering if it’s such a big story, why haven’t I heard about it on Fox,” Gardner, as Earhardt then says.

“I think it’s because they’re suing us for $1.6bn,” says Yang. “No, it’s because it’s complete BS. The media is taking private texts from Fox News hosts and showing them completely out of context.”

The trio then poke fun at text messages between Fox hosts where Sean Hannity called Rudy Giuliani “insane”.

“How could you leave out the rest?” says Yang. “Rudy Giuliani is insanely hot, I just wanna lick that head dye right off.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, played by the versatile James Austin Johnson, is then introduced lived from CPac, and he couldn’t help himself from having a crack at the vote processing company.

“Every Dominion machine has a Venezuelan Oompa Loompa inside,” Johnson says.

The skit also showed Gardner confusing Mr Murdoch, the Fox Corporation chairman, with convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh.

Meanwhile, the legal woes continue to mount for Fox.

On Friday, progressive watchdog Media Matters filed a lawsuit with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Fox made an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign when it shared confidential campaign information with the former president’s son-n-law Jared Kushner.