The cast of Saturday Night Livereturned after a three-week break to take on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly amid recent sexual harassment allegations he is facing, all while continuing their coverage of the Trump administration.
In the video above, Alec Baldwin portrays O'Reilly in a segment of his show, The O'Reilly Factor.It opens with O'Reilly addressing "a scandal" of allegations against the Obama administration
As O'Reilly's show goes on it's apparent he's having some issues with reporters, who all happen to be women. The first problem occurs when a reporter doesn't appear.
"What's that? Laura no longer works at the company? Well, did she get the check? OK, fine," O'Reilly says.
After a reference to the $13 million O'Reilly used to settle with five women who filed sexual harassment allegations against him, he moves to a segment from Malia Zimmerman (Cecily Strong), an investigative correspondent, who's reporting from outside the building, away from O'Reilly.
While O'Reilly questions Zimmerman about her interview with former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, it's not exactly about the facts. When Zimmerman tells O'Reilly that Rice said she didn't leak the names, O'Reilly continues looking for a different answer.
"OK, but when she said no, what was her vibe?" he says. "Like, when she said 'no,' did her eyes say 'yes?' Sometimes they'll do that."
O'Reilly pushes forward looking for some type of confession from Rice, all while Zimmerman is clearly uncomfortable with the host. O'Reilly's language mirrors a common dilemma with sexual consent that's often seen on college campuses.
The conversation becomes more direct as O'Reilly addresses the allegations against him.
"Apparently several women have come forward and accused me of offering them exciting opportunities here at Fox News," he says. "Beyond that, the details are a bit fuzzy, but one man was brave enough ... one man ... to come to my defense, a man who was unimpeachable on all female issues. Now, he's here tonight."
Donald Trump, also played by Alec Baldwin, enters the show and comes to O'Reilly's defense, much as he did in real-life last week. When the allegations came out, President Trump told reporters from the New York Times, that he didn't think O'Reilly did anything wrong.
"I think he's a person I know well — he is a good person," Trump said of O'Reilly in the Times interview. "I think he shouldn't have settled; personally I think he shouldn't have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don't think Bill did anything wrong."
Trump, who also had women make allegations of sexual assault against him during the campaign, made these comments at the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which caused some to think the comments supporting O'Reilly were lacking substance.
Even the short breaks in O'Reilly's segment reflect his show's reality. The ads were lacking major name players, a reference to the number of companies that have pulled ads from the program.
The cast also took on Pepsi, another entity that spurred conversation this week with their ad, that they have since pulled, starring Kendall Jenner. They offered an idea to what the production of the ad might have looked like.
As the final taping is about to begin, the writer-director (Beck Bennett), a white man, gets a call from his sister in which he shares his vision.
"It was like completely my idea and now they're doing it," he says excitedly. "OK, so well, it's an homage to the resistance, so there's this huge protest in the street reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. So everybody's marching, right? And they get to these police officers and you think it's going to go bad because there's kind of like a standoff and then Kendall Jenner walks in and she walks up to one of the police officers and she hands him a Pepsi. And then that Pepsi brings everyone together. Isn't that like the best ad ever?"
The description is pretty accurate with the actual ad, but the sister does not think the ad is the best thing ever. She, along with two others, tell him it's a "sort of tone-deaf," but there's not time to change it. The SNLad ends with a different message "Live And Learn."
Later the show returned to Trump during the Weekend Updatesegment with Colin Jost and Michael Che.
"The only thing scarier than Donald Trump acting un-presidential, is Donald Trump acting presidential," Jost said.
Jost went on to say that Trump's response to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield after a chemical weapon attack on civilians was similar to the President's tweets. Che then explained how Syria is part of a complicated relationship between the U.S. and Russia, but also an ally to the U.S. movement to defeat ISIS. Che likened the relationship between three countries to The Three Stooges, another trio.
The show returns on April 15, with host Jimmy Fallon and musical guest Harry Styles.
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