Actor Woody Harrelson took a jab at COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines during his opening monologue on this weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live, only to have Elon Musk jump in Twitter and suggest he was correct.
In his monologue, Harrelson, 61, likened pharmaceutical companies to drug cartels, and quipped that they hatched a plot wherein they bought up media and politicians then forced the world to stay at home unless everybody took their drugs.
The monologue was met with mixed reactions, with some saying it fell flat, others finding it humorous, while some decried it as anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
Debates over the monologue ramped up when billionaire Elon Musk, 51, joined the fray on Twitter and praised Harrelson for taking a ‘based’ stance, called the media ‘propaganda,’ and suggested the actor was spot on.
Saturday night was Harrelson’s fifth time hosting SNL. He last appeared on the show in November, 2019, months before the pandemic broke out.
After describing himself as being both red and blue and therefore purple, and calling himself an ‘anarchist, marxist, ethical hedonist, discriminatory empath, epistemological deconstructionist Texan,’ Harrelson shared a story about smoking weed in central park and reading ‘the craziest script’ for a movie pitch.
‘So the movie goes like this,’ he said. ‘The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes.’
‘And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.’
‘I threw the script away,’ he joked. ‘I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day.’
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Woody Harrelson hosted Saturday Night Live for the fifth time on Saturday Night
After the show, numerous outlets wrote Harrelson had ‘spread’ and ‘spewed’ ‘anti-vax conspiracies’ during his monologue.
Some took to Twitter to point out the irony of the media following through with exactly the kind of messaging Harrelson joked about, then Musk jumped in to voice his agreement.
‘So based. Nice work @nbcsnl!’ he wrote in response to a clip of Harrelson’s pandemic joke.
Then in response to a round-up of headlines decrying Harrelson’s bit, Musk wrote ‘Maybe they don’t realize that their propaganda is wrong?’
Finally, on another post comparing other headlines, Musk commented an emoji of a dart landing on a bullseye.
