- Kamala Harris appeared on “Saturday Night Live” for a cameo ahead of the US election.
- The vice president appeared alongside actor Maya Rudolph in the show’s cold open.
- “You can do something your opponent cannot do: you can open doors,” Harris joked about Trump.
Kamala Harris made a surprise campaign stop this weekend: Studio 8H, 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The vice president flew to New York City on Saturday after a campaign event in North Carolina to appear in the last episode of “Saturday Night Live” before voters go to the polls on November 5.
She appeared in the episode’s cold open alongside her “SNL” impressionist, actor Maya Rudolph, in a sketch that began by parodying CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
Harris’ cameo came after James Austin Johnson’s spoof of a “four-and-a-half-hour” long Donald Trump rally speech.
As Rudolph impersonated Harris backstage at a campaign rally, she wished aloud that she could talk to someone “who’s been in my shoes,” a “Black, South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay area.”
The camera then panned to a beaming vice president.
“You and me both sister,” Harris said.
Harris then appeared to poke fun at a recent video of Trump struggling to climb into a garbage truck at a campaign event in Wisconsin.
“I am just here to remind you, you got this. Because you can do something your opponent cannot do: you can open doors,” Harris said.
The rest of the sketch involved Harris questioning Rudolph’s impression of her laugh, a rhyming pep talk (“keep calm-ala and carry-on-ala”), and a final joke about whether Rudolph was registered in Pennsylvania — a swing state that will play a key role in this year’s election.
NBC/Rosalind O’Connor/NBC via Getty Images
“SNL” has a long history of politicians appearing on the show.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders have all made cameos before, while Trump hosted the show in 2015.
Responding to Harris’ appearance on the show, a Trump campaign spokesperson told News Nation in a statement that Harris “has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists.”
“SNL” creator Lorne Michaels said earlier this year that he had not approached any political candidates about joining the show before the election and had no plans to do so.
“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated,” Michaels added.
A representative for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, which was sent outside regular working hours.
