During tonight episode of Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost compared President Donald Trump‘s nomination of former Attorney General William Barr to take the office again to ABC’s decision to bring back Roseanne Barr.
Earlier this week, Trump announced he would nominate Barr to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Acting Attorney General Matthew Whittaker. Barr previously served as President George H.W. Bush‘s Attorney General from November 1991 until January 1993.
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“I did not know him until recently,” Trump said of Barr Friday, reports USA Today. “But he was my first choice since Day 1.”
“A reboot of someone with the last name Barr who was big in the early ’90s? What could go wrong?” Jost said, with Roseanne Barr’s image on the screen.
The joke refers to ABC’s decision to bring back Roseanne for a 10th season during the 2017-2018 TV season. Initially, the move was a success, since the series unseated The Big Bang Theory as the most-watched network sitcom of the season.
However, in May, Roseanne Barr published a racist tweet, in which she compared former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett to the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes characters. Although Roseanne Barr had a known history of tweeting controversial messages, this was the final straw for the network, which chose to cancel Roseanne hours after the message was posted.
Since then, Barr has insisted she is not racist and has continued to interact with fans on social media and media appearances. In September, she appeared on the season premiere of Dr. Oz and claimed she was moving to Israel.
“I don’t want to be around, because I’ll get drawn into a negative thing of defending myself or being angry for being mischaracterized and, you know, I don’t … I want to stay away from it,” Barr told the host. “I want to stay in a joyous, positive, happy place that I’ve worked my way to again in my life.”
Barr has not moved yet. She lives in Hawaii and continues to post new videos on her YouTube page.
Meanwhile, ABC is airing The Conners, a Roseanne spin-off featuring John Goodman, Sara Gilbert and Laurie Metcalf. The series began with the writers killing off her character, Roseanne Conner, with an opioid overdose.
New episodes of SNL air on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET. The Conners airs on ABC at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesdays.
Photo Credit: ABC
