‘SNL’ Suspends Writer Over Joke About Trump’s Son

Last Friday, Donald Trump was officially inducted into office. Lots of folks were pretty upset about that and expressed it in a myriad of ways; they protested the inauguration, they marched in various cities the following day, and many of them took to social media to voice their concerns, talk trash and just crack jokes about the whole ordeal. Saturday Night Live writer Katie Rich decided to do the latter, and she’s now been suspended from the show for it.

On Inauguration Day, Rich, a Weekend Update writer since 2013, sent out a now-deleted tweet about Trump’s ten-year-old son, Barron, that read:

“Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter,” she tweeted on Friday, rousing anger on social media and from some media outlets, who argued that while jokes are okay, politicians’ kids should be off limits.

The joke is kind of funny (if not a bit crass) on the surface, unless it bothers you to find out that Barron isn’t actually home-schooled. Whereas most of us might be ok with accepting the tweet as a 5/10 joke and moving on, the Twitterverse had other ideas. Despite the fact that Rich deleted the tweet only a few hours after posting it, people continued to harass her and NBC over its contents throughout the weekend.

According to a source who spoke with Deadline, Rich has been indefinitely suspended from the show; Her name did not appear in the credits of Saturday’s broadcast.

Rich has, understandably, made her Twitter account private, with the only public tweet available being an apology for her Barron Trump joke:

Whether the apology tour came in time still remains to be seen. An “indefinite suspension” is not a good sign, but it’s certainly better than being fired. As fans of comedy, we hope that a seasoned and otherwise controversy-free writer doesn’t end up out of a job due to one Twitter joke that didn’t land, but the voice of the mob often drowns out the voice of reason, so we’ll have to see where this one goes.

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Bill Tressler

Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.
Bill Tressler
Bill Tressler
Bill is a writer and comedy enthusiast from New York. An avid gamer and podcast fan, he strives to always toe the line between charming irreverence and grating honesty.