&#8220;Saturday Night Live&#8221; regulars Colin Jost and Michael Che mocked billionaire Elon Musk over his possible plans to buy Twitter — which the Tesla and Space-X co-founder says is all about returning the platform to its promise as a haven for free speech.
Jost and Che took aim at the issue from several angles, arguing everything from it being a poor business decision to it being a thinly-disguised effort to make sure that white people could say &#8220;the n-word.&#8221;
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Your Weekend Update with Colin and Che! <a href="https://t.co/R3rAR28Dhc">pic.twitter.com/R3rAR28Dhc</a>
&mdash; Saturday Night Live &#8211; SNL (@nbcsnl) <a href="https://twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/1515567176056508416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 17, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for over $40 billion so he can loosen its free speech restrictions,&#8221; Che began. &#8220;That&#8217;s how badly white guys want to use the ‘N-word.'&#8221;
&#8220;I don’t understand why Elon even wants to own Twitter,&#8221; Jost replied, laughing. &#8220;It used to be something that seemed important and even fun and now you look at it and it’s confusing and depressing. It’s the Giuliani of apps.&#8221;
Jost went on to make a joke a the expense of Britain&#8217;s <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-visit-queen-elizabeth-ii-for-first-time-since-stepping-down-from-royal-roles-report/">Prince Harry and Meghan Markle</a>.
&#8220;Come on, Elon — Elon built electric cars, he’s going to Mars, why is he even involving himself with Twitter?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;It would be like if the Prince of England gave it all up just to marry an actor from &#8216;Suits.'&#8221;
&#8220;Plus, Twitter isn’t even that profitable anymore. It just feels like a bad business decision. And I say that as someone who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/nyregion/pete-davidson-colin-jost-staten-island-ferry.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bought a Staten Island Ferry</a> with Pete [Davidson],&#8221; Jost concluded.
Musk made the <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/saudi-princes-rejection-of-musk-offer-highlights-twitters-history-of-housing-alleged-saudi-spies/">$43 billion offer</a> after recently becoming Twitter&#8217;s largest individual shareholder and turning down a spot on the board. The board responded with a poison pill, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/breaking-twitter-board-passes-poison-pill-to-stop-musk-takeover/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The board has adopted a “limited duration shareholder rights plan,” which gives Twitter’s existing shareholders, except Musk, time to purchase additional shares at a discount, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/twitter-elon-musk-poison-pill-7a62f6d6-b77a-4481-a2e3-5a7081557a84.html">reported</a> Friday.
The desired effect is clearly to dilute Musk’s holding in the company, and make the cost of a takeover higher or even prohibitive.
“A poison pill, devised by law firms in the 1980s to protect companies from corporate raiders, essentially lets a takeover target flood the market with new shares or allow existing shareholders other than the bidder to buy them at a discount,” The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/business/dealbook/twitter-poison-pill-elon-musk.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytimes">explained</a>. “That means anyone trying to acquire the company must negotiate directly with the board.”
The pill will be activated “once any individual or a group of people working together buy 15 percent or more of Twitter’s shares,” the Times noted.
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The two also took aim at President Joe Biden during their &#8220;Weekend Update&#8221; segment, mocking video of the president apparently finishing a speech and turning to shake hands with someone who was not there.
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Biden just finished his speech and shook hands with nobody <a href="https://t.co/XLndAZcHiD">pic.twitter.com/XLndAZcHiD</a>
&mdash; Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1514693033056473088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 14, 2022</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;A video has also gone viral of President Biden finishing a speech in North Carolina, then apparently turning to shake hands with an invisible person,&#8221; Jost began, then delivering the punchline: &#8220;Hey, her name is Kamala.&#8221;
After some mumbling from the audience, Jost added, &#8220;When was the last time you saw her?&#8221;

In this photo illustration, the Twitter logo is displayed on

‘SNL’: Elon Musk Wants To Buy Twitter So White Guys Can Say ‘The N-Word’

Colin Jost

Elon Musk

Free Speech

Michael Che

Saturday Night Live

Twitter

During the latest episode of Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost provided audience members with an analysis of the “gun control” debate, claiming that Republicans “value guns more than people you don’t know.”
“Well, this week kind of felt like Biden on those stairs,” Jost began, alongside images of Biden falling up the steps of Air Force One. “You thought it had to get better, but it repeatedly got worse.”
“In the wake of the Colorado and Atlanta shootings, President Biden called for universal background checks for gun purchases,” he continued. “And background checks are a great start, but shouldn’t we also do current checks? Like, what are these guys up to now? How much Call of Duty are they playing? Have they recently DMed a girl ‘Hey’ 30 times?”
“Or how about this,” Jost added, moving to the subject of gun control, “if you want a gun, the gun store has to talk to at least five people from your life who agree it’s a good idea for you to have a gun.”
“It’s not really that much to ask,” he said. “You’ve got to list three references on an application to work at Foot Locker.”
“And Republicans, please stop pretending this is a Second Amendment issue and just admit you love guns more than people you don’t know,” showing political advertisements from a handful of Republican figures which include firearms.
“If you actually cared about the Second Amendment, you’d also care about the well-regulated militias part. And I don’t know if you noticed when they almost hung you two months ago, but our militias aren’t super well regulated,” he concluded.
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Unsurprisingly, the political analysis from Saturday Night Live is entirely ignorant. Let’s break it down.
Biden called for far more than “universal background checks.”
Jost applied the classic “over simplification” tactic used by the Left when conservatives oppose their policy positions by cherry-picking the least extreme element of broader legislative objectives and presenting them as indicative of their entire position. 
In this case, Jost implies that Biden just called for universal background checks, when in fact, Biden’s policy suggestions included far more than the expansion of background checks.
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-biden-pushes-ban-on-assault-weapons-high-capacity-magazines-following-colorado-mass-shooting">reported</a>, “President Joe Biden made a brief statement, Tuesday morning, addressing the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, and pledging to press forward with gun ‘reform’ measures, including a ban on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ and a ban on ‘high capacity magazines.’”
The argument used by Jost is the logical equivalent of a political party rejecting criticism of a national “Cocaine and Ice Cream for Children Day” by accusing their opponents of hating ice cream.
“Current checks” already exist
While Jost used some apparently humorous examples of “current checks” that could be applied, such as “How much Call of Duty are they playing?” and “Have they recently DMed a girl ‘Hey’ 30 times?” he ignored the fact that some form of “current checks” already exist.
Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some form of red-flag law which permits police departments or family members to file for the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to themselves or others.
These red-flag laws are known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) in Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Vermont and Colorado; Extreme Risk Firearm Protection Orders (ERFPO) in New Mexico; Risk Protection Orders in Florida; Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs) in California; risk warrants in Connecticut; and Proceedings for the Seizure and Retention of a Firearm in Indiana.
Given that such “current checks” in the form of “red-flag laws” already exist in Colorado — the location of one of the mass shootings discussed by Jost — it seems like his suggestions are redundant.
References for gun purchases
This suggestion is absurd for many reasons. For example, it is obscenely easy to bypass — references could be fabricated, selected based on likelihood to remain supportive, or chosen based on their willingness to lie. It also applies a popularity layer upon an inalienable right — what happens if you don’t have any friends? Are your Constitutional rights invalid?
Republicans care about the Second Amendment and people they don’t know
The argument Jost used — asking Republicans to “please stop pretending this is a Second Amendment issue and just admit you love guns more than people you don’t know” — is more despicable than most will acknowledge. He is implying that Republicans are pretending the debate over gun control has anything to do with the U.S. Constitution, and is instead motivated by a physical love for guns, which are then viewed as more valuable than human beings.
This is absurd. The gun control debate is based entirely on the Second Amendment, without which this “debate” would already have been decided in a similar fashion to the rest of the Western world. Hand-picking a few controversial Republican figures to mischaracterize all conservatives as “gun nuts” is dishonest and cynical, and is designed to dilute the debate down to the “intelligent Left” and the comparatively “unintelligent Right.”
Jost desperately wants to drag the debate away from the Second Amendment because he knows that he can only win in the arena of insult and emotion.
Well-regulated militias
Jost referenced another lazy anti-gun argument when it comes to the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Second Amendment is divided into two parts: its prefatory clause (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) and its operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”). The “individual rights” thesis emphasizes the operative clause, while the “states’ rights” thesis focuses on the prefatory clause.
In 2008, the Supreme Court definitively ruled in favor of the “individual rights” theory in District of Columbia v. Heller. According to Cornell Law School’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-2#:~:text=The%20Second%20Amendment%20is%20naturally,shall%20not%20be%20infringed%E2%80%9D).">Legal Information Institute</a>, “The Court reached this conclusion after a textual analysis of the Amendment, an examination of the historical use of prefatory phrases in statutes, and a detailed exploration of the 18th century meaning of phrases found in the Amendment. Although accepting that the historical and contemporaneous use of the phrase ‘keep and bear Arms’ often arose in connection with military activities, the Court noted that its use was not limited to those contexts.”
Ian Haworth is an Editor and Writer for The Daily Wire. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ighaworth">@ighaworth</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Republicans ‘Value Guns More Than People You Don’t Know’: Debunking Colin Jost’s Ignorant Comments On Gun Control

Gun Control

Second Amendment

During the “Weekend Update” segment of “Saturday Night Live” this week, head writers and co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che lambasted President Trump over his acquittal in the United States Senate and mocked radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Tuesday’s State of the Union.
“The day after the Senate vote, President Trump gave a speech at the White House, which he called a celebration,” said Che. “Let’s take a look.”
The screen then showed footage from the moment when former football player O.J. Simpson was found “not guilty” of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson Brown and the murder of Ronald Goldman. In the clip, Simpson smiles and raises his hand in the air upon being found “not guilty.”
The “SNL” audience reacted with laughter and groans.
“Oh, that’s the wrong clip. Here’s the actual one,” Che chuckled before playing a series of snippets from Trump’s actual post-acquittal speech in which the president slammed Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling them “horrible” people.
The snippets also included Trump calling former FBI Director James Comey a “sleazebag,” and referring to the Russia investigation as “bulls***.”
After the clip, Che noted that the audience for the speech “consisted of his legal team and Republican lawmakers because I guess that circle ain’t gonna j*** itself.”
The first mention of Rush Limbaugh was harmless enough, with Jost saying that the president awarding the conservative radio host the Medal of Freedom, as well as celebrating the new Space Force, was “predicted by a MadLib I did in 1992.”
The following joke from Michael Che got vicious.
“During the State of the Union, President Trump, in a touching moment, awarded Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” Che began. “And then immediately after the speech, in a more touching moment, Rush traded the medal for a bottle of Oxy.”
After audience laughter and groans, Che followed up, saying, “Now, say what you want about Rush Limbaugh,” then stopped speaking, and looked down.
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For the uninitiated, Rush Limbaugh <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/high-school-teacher-on-leave-after-tweet-celebrating-limbaughs-cancer-diagnosis-its-awesome-that-hes-dying">announced</a> during his radio show on Monday that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.
“I have to tell you something today that I wish I didn’t have to tell you,” he said. “I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Diagnosis confirmed by two medical institutions back on January 20th.”
The radio host was subsequently invited to attend President Trump’s State of the Union address, during which he was presented with the Medal of Freedom.
According to Limbaugh, while he was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/limbaugh-returns-after-cancer-announcement-explains-how-trump-talked-him-into-attending-sotu">aware</a> that he would be presented with the award itself, he believed that it would happen weeks later at the White House. When it was awarded to him during SOTU, he was clearly stunned.
Micahel Che’s joke about “Oxy” was in reference to Limbaugh’s previous addiction to the drug. In 2003, after reports surfaced that Limbaugh was addicted to OxyContin and other painkillers, the host confessed on his radio program.
Limbaugh <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rush-limbaughs-statement/">stated</a> in part:
<blockquote>I am not making any excuses. You know, over the years athletes and celebrities have emerged from treatment centers to great fanfare and praise for conquering great demons. They are said to be great role models and examples for others. Well, I am no role model. I refuse to let anyone think I am doing something great here, when there are people you never hear about, who face long odds and never resort to such escapes. They are the role models. I am no victim and do not portray myself as such. I take full responsibility for my problem. At the present time, the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete.</blockquote>
Britannica <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rush-Limbaugh">notes,</a> “In 2006 [Limbaugh] was arrested for drug fraud after authorities <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alleged">alleged</a> that he ‘doctor shopped’ (illegally obtained prescriptions from multiple physicians). Limbaugh later reached a deal with prosecutors, and the charges were dropped after he received treatment.”

Michael Che and Colin Jost

WATCH: SNL Makes O.J. Simpson Reference Over Trump’s Acquittal; Mocks Rush Limbaugh’s Former Drug Addiction

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Rush Limbaugh

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Colin Jost

‘SNL’: Elon Musk Wants To Buy Twitter So White Guys Can Say ‘The N-Word’

Republicans ‘Value Guns More Than People You Don’t Know’: Debunking Colin Jost’s Ignorant Comments On Gun Control

WATCH: SNL Makes O.J. Simpson Reference Over Trump’s Acquittal; Mocks Rush Limbaugh’s Former Drug Addiction