You won’t see THIS on SNL: Saudi TV airs comedy skit savaging Biden and Harris

American satirists may have strayed from poking as much fun at leading leftists as they do conservatives, but comedians abroad have felt no such obligation as one Saudi sketch comedy show hit home with a scathing lampoon of the current administration amid flailing foreign relations.

(Video: MBC)

Following 13 months of conflict between Russia and Ukraine, growing threats from China toward Taiwan, and the most recent attacks by Iranians against American forces stationed in Syria that took the life of a U.S. contractor, President Joe Biden is looking increasingly worse on the world stage.

Friday, a clip from a Saudi Arabian state-run television program, “Studio 22,” parodied the 80-year-old president’s penchant for getting lost on stage and his personal struggles with the Air Force One staircase in a skit that barely strayed from reality.

As depicted, the actor playing Biden was seen concluding a speech before stepping to one side of the stage with his hand extended for a shake though no one else was there. It was then that an actor performing the role of Vice President Kamala Harris, exuding masculinity, could be seen entering the shot from the other side of the stage, frantically coaching the bumbling Biden on which way to go.

Preventing the president from wandering off again, the two actors are then seen on a tarmac with the vice president cringing as the Biden character repeatedly falls in his attempt to climb the staircase.

The depiction was not the first time the pair had joined up to mock the administration as, in April 2022, the elderly executive was portrayed being coached by his VP after misspeaking and falling asleep mid-speech.

The sketch went viral at the same time that Biden was being slammed for his “weak” and “uncertain” response to attacks from Iran as the terrorist-harboring nation was working with China to “restore diplomatic relations” with Saudi Arabia.

As previously reported, the president had ordered a retaliatory airstrike against Iran after a U.S. contractor was killed and six others were wounded from a Thursday drone strike. The American counterattack was said to have taken the lives of eight Iranians, prompting another rocket attack on the U.S. base in Syria.

Biden’s tempered response led hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to state, “President Biden owes it to those Americans fighting radical Islam to respond vigorously to any attack on them and their position by Iranian proxies. The weak, uncertain response to the initial attack obviously did not work.”

Meanwhile, it remained unclear what concessions the U.S. had made to Saudi Arabia to secure the release of an American citizen who had been sentenced to 19 years in prison for criticizing the government and royal family in a series of tweets. What was known was that Boeing had just agreed to sell 121 jets to a pair of Saudi airlines and the Senate had confirmed Michael Ratney as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia after the position had sat vacant throughout Biden’s tenure.

Kevin Haggerty

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