On Sept. 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore dropped her son off at his San Francisco school, visited a private gun dealer and, in what she later told the Los Angeles Times was a "a kind of ultimate protest against the system," drew a .38-calibre pistol outside a hotel later in the day, firing at then-president Gerald Ford.
Moore, who had a history of mental illness but had become enmeshed in radical left-wing groups, didn't hit her target in two attempts.
Bizarrely, Moore's wasn't the only attempt on the president's life that month by a woman. Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, a one-time acolyte of murderous cult leader Charles Manson, had been tackled by a Secret Service agent 17 days earlier as she pointed a gun in Ford's direction in Sacramento, Calif.
Moore — whose death at 95 was reported this week — insisted she wasn't influenced by Fromme. She pleaded guilty, while Fromme — not unlike Ryan Routh, convicted this week of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump — proved a somewhat unruly defendant. Both women spent decades in prison and were released in the late 2000s.
On Oct. 25, 1975, a new NBC late-night comedy show aired just its third episode. One sketch on the show piloted by young Canadian producer Lorne Michaels had Laraine Newman guesting on a talk show "Dangerous But Inept" as Fromme, calling the interviewer, played by Jane Curtin, a "fawning fascist sycophant." The sketch ended with Curtin teasing the talk show's purported guest the following week, Moore.
The now-voluminous lore of the early years of Saturday Night Live, which includes several books and television profiles, contains tales of battles between the show's cast and writers with NBC censors, as well as accounts of affiliates baffled by the show's brand of humour. But if there was any great upset at the Fromme sketch, let alone comment from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair at the time, it never registered as a seminal moment.
It is, obviously, now a much different late-night landscape as SNL kicks off its 51st season on Oct. 4 — not just compared to the show's earliest days, but even since it last aired a new episode in mid-May. It has been announced that Stephen Colbert's weeknight CBS show is in its last months , while Jimmy Kimmel was suspended for a week following comments he made on his ABC show in the wake of the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, an influential but polarizing political organizer in the MAGA movement.
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Ford 'good-natured' about jokes: Michaels
Previous FCC chairs have regulated in relative anonymity, but Brendan Carr has offered opinions on what he views as liberal bias, from standard political news shows to even entertainment offerings. As president again, meanwhile, Trump has openly hoped the Colbert and Kimmel troubles will precede the cancellation of NBC's weeknight shows which air after local news programs for most affiliates, hosted by SNL alum Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers, and executive produced by Michaels.
Kimmel, in his return to the air carried on the ABC network but not by dozens of local affiliates, blasted Trump for cheering the potential unemployment of "hundreds of people" who work on those NBC offerings.
"Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods, because he can't take a joke," said Kimmel.
President Gerald Ford and wife Betty Ford are shown at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City on Aug. 19, 1976. Michaels and Chevy Chase recalled Ford as a good sport as a fledgling Saturday Night Live made fun of the president in sketches. (Karl Schumacher/Gerald R. Ford Library/Getty Images)
While the media landscape of 1975 and 2025 can't be reasonably compared, the reactions of Trump and Ford to SNL, among the nine U.S. presidents it has satirized, provide a glaring contrast.
SNL began to hit its stride with a boomer audience, then teens and young adults yearning for something new on television, by its fourth episode, Michaels later recounted to Tom Shales and James Miller, authors of a 2002 oral history of the show — and cast member Chevy Chase's portrayal of Ford was part of the winning formula.
Ford, despite a background as a college athlete, had more than one stumble while president. The show's writers revelled in putting Ford the character in various scenarios, with Chase indulging in elaborate pratfalls.
Ron Nessen, Ford's press secretary, later recounted just happening to catch a January 1976 SNL episode, and by March, Ford and Chase were gently ribbing each other at a pair of gala dinners. Ford was "incredibly decent and good-natured" about the sketches," Michaels said when the former president died in 2006.
"Luckily for me, Mr. Ford had a sense of humour," Chase reflected in an op-ed in early 2007, thanking the president and his wife, as the actor once sought help at the Betty Ford Center in the 1980s.
Nessen, in an election year where the Republican Party was still stinging from Richard Nixon's Watergate-fuelled resignation, saw a greater opportunity to connect with young voters. He hosted SNL in April 1976, with Ford pre-recording SNL's now-famous cold open.
White House press secretary Ron Nessen, left, was the first political figure to host Saturday Night Live. He's shown on April 17, 1976, at the front of the stage, with cast member Chase, centre, and show producer Michaels. (The Associated Press)
The decision probably backfired, both Ford and especially Nessen — who died in March — wrote in respective memoirs. That's because some writers and cast members have since recounted wanting to be merciless on that episode and not treat the Ford administration with kid gloves.
"The comedian's job was to point out the defects of the establishment and revel in the anarchy," Matt Fotis writes in 2020's Satire & The State: Sketch Comedy and the Presidency. "Ford and Nessen's miscalculation about hosting SNL lies in their misunderstanding of the changing comedic landscape."
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National tragedies, changing sensibilities
Presidential candidate portrayals have continued ever since, and the show was even referenced during a 2008 Democratic primary debate , after it had recently lampooned fawning coverage of Barack Obama in a sketch, featuring the fuzziest of softball questions for the candidate.
" … if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," Hillary Clinton said during the debate.
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Clinton's barb evinced annoyance with her own media coverage. If Obama was annoyed, it didn't prevent him from nominating her for secretary of state in a matter of months.
Brendar Carr, chairperson of the FCC, will likely take note of what SNL airs this season. When Democratic candidate Kamala Harris popped in for a cameo on the show, Carr complained Trump wasn't afforded "equal time" during the campaign. Trump hosted the show in 2004 when his reality show The Apprentice was a hit, and as a presidential candidate in 2015. In 2024, he made appearances on network-aired sporting events; Harris did not.
Cameos on the show in the last weeks of the 2008 campaign by Republican John McCain — who hosted in 2002 — and his vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had no evident impact on their election, which they lost. Obama's lone cameo occurred in October 2007, long before he secured the Democratic nomination.
Trump, through tweets over the years , has rapped SNL in harsher terms than anything Ford mustered over the Nessen-hosted show. More applicable to current conditions, Trump complained in 2019 it was "truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live … can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over &, over, without so much of a mention of 'the other side.'"
Trump's 2015 appearance, as well as Elon Musk's six years later, were said to have rankled some show members. Michaels admitted to Susan Morrison for her book, Lorne: The Man who Invented Saturday Night Live, that cast sensibilities have changed, telling her he tried to impress upon the cast "the distinction between their own personal feelings and the script."
Michaels was bemused at the time that a cast member was hesitant to portray Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 85 at the time.
"They care so deeply now," he told Morrison in the book. "The women in particular feel so threatened."
By that point, Morrison reported, former longtime writer Jim Downey had complained to friends still with the show that SNL sometimes felt like the "comedy division of the [Democratic National Committee]."
Former cast member Kate McKinnon, on a new episode of Hot Ones , said she believes Michaels will meet the moment in polarizing times exacerbated by the Kirk killing.
"Every time there has been a national tragedy that has demanded a sincere cold open," she said on the podcast.
SNL under Michaels's leadership has both sidestepped national tragedies — the Oklahoma City bombing was better fodder for a Weekend Update joke about the domestic terrorist from Canadian Norm Macdonald — but also been praised at other times, as with the first new show after the 9/11 attacks.
After a sombre opening on Sept. 29, 2001, with New York City first responders onstage, Michaels appeared with then-mayor Rudy Giuliani and asked, "Can we be funny?"
Giuliani perfectly delivered the response: "Why start now?"
[SRC] https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/snl-politics-ford-trump-1.7644339
