Jeremy Culhane's New Elon Musk Drew 2.2 Million Views. Grok Did the Roasting
SNL's Weekend Update brought out a fresh Musk impression the week the billionaire's midterm money mostly lost, and let his own chatbot deliver the final blow.
By the Heckle Desk · · 2 min readSaturday's Weekend Update guest spot with Jeremy Culhane as Elon Musk had about 2.2 million YouTube views by Monday, behind only the Update desk segment itself at roughly 3.5 million and well ahead of most of Druski's sketches. America had a choice of comedy and picked the man who lost his money. America always does. It's the only thing we enjoy more than a rich man winning.
The facts first. Musk poured something like $440 to $470 million into Republican candidates this cycle, depending on whose count you trust, and most of them lost on Tuesday. That same week, Tesla said it would wind down Cybertruck production. A lesser man would have had a bad week. Musk had two bad weeks at once and invoiced them both to shareholders.
Colin Jost played straight man and opened by noting it had been a tough week for Musk. Culhane's Musk then dodged every question about the Cybertruck with a long, wandering story, which, if you've ever listened to the man explain anything, is less an impression than a transcript. NBC billed it as Culhane's brand-new Musk, which means the show has now gone through more Elon Musks than Tesla has gone through Cybertruck orders, or near enough.
The best move came at the end. Musk asked his own chatbot, Grok, for an epic vulgar roast, and it obliged, with insults personal enough that he started shouting at it to shut down. That's the joke right there: a man spends a fortune building a machine that tells the truth to everybody else, and then it gets around to him. It's like a fellow who sells guard dogs being chased up a tree by his own inventory.
SNL has gone after Musk for years, of course, and he hosted the show himself in 2021, back when it seemed like a fun idea to both parties. Now they've cast him with a younger man and made the robot the punchline. I'm not sure who's having the worse time, the billionaire or the impressionist who has to keep up with his news.
There's an old rule that money can't buy happiness. Nobody ever said it couldn't buy an election, but it turns out it can't always do that either, and when it fails, it buys you a sketch on Saturday night instead. That's the one purchase that's guaranteed to be returned.