FCC Commissioner on VP Harris’s SNL appearance: 'clear and blatant effort' to evade Equal Time rule

While Vice President Kamala Harris’s appearance in the opening segment of “Saturday Night Live” on the Saturday before the presidential election drew massive attention in social and mainstream media, it drew criticism from the senior Republican commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission who called it a “clear and blatant effort” to evade the Equal Time rule.

Brendan Carr tweeted on X that the FCC’s “equal time” requirements require opposing candidates to get the same air time, and said that NBC “structured this appearance in a way that evades these requirements,” reported the New York Post. 

“This is 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,” Carr wrote on X.

He added that “In the 2016 cycle, President Obama’s FCC Chair made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on SNL.”

While news reports earlier in the evening announced her upcoming appearance, Harris came face-to-face with SNL veteran Maya Rudolph who returned to the show this season to play Harris during the show’s skits related to the upcoming election. Near the end of the skit, Rudolph, as Harris, arm-in-arm with the real Harris, said “I’m going to vote for us.”