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Vice President Harris made an unscheduled appearance on “Saturday Night Live” alongside her on-screen doppelgänger, Maya Rudolph.
Why it matters: Harris is making her final pitch to voters, with stops in Georgia and North Carolina on Saturday and Michigan on Sunday. In between, she appeared before a national TV audience to drum up enthusiasm ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Driving the news: Harris joined at the tail end of the cold open, seated across a “mirror” from Rudolph, portraying her.
- “I’m just here to remind you, ‘You got this.’ Because you can do something your opponent cannot do: you can open doors,” Harris told Rudolph, joking about former President Trump’s apparent struggle to climb into a garbage truck on Wednesday.
- Harris also joked about Rudolph’s impersonation, asking: “I don’t really laugh like that, do I?”
- The two then riffed back and forth on Harris’ name, quipping that America needs to “keep calm-ala and carry on-ala.”
Between the lines: Harris is not the first presidential contender to appear on the show. Still, appearing so close to Election Day is unusual and sure to draw plenty of attention and scrutiny — along with her decision to divert to New York for such a brief appearance.
Worth noting: The first sketch after the cold open featured another political guest: Sen. Tim Kaine.
- The joke was that host John Mulaney, appearing on a game show, could not recognize Kaine despite voting for him as Hillary Clinton’s running mate and describing that election at the time as the most important in history.
How it happened: Harris was scheduled to fly from Charlotte to Detroit on Saturday evening, but her campaign added a surprise stop in New York to the itinerary.
- The timing immediately sparked speculation that she would be appearing on SNL.