A Saturday Night Live gag that digitally inserted Colin Jost into archival footage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein has turned up in real-world Epstein files coverage—thanks to a widely circulated news story that initially ran with the screen grab as its featured image.
The image appeared Friday evening atop a Mediaite article titled “DOJ Redacted Names of ‘Politically Exposed Individuals’ in Epstein Files: Report”; it was replaced after commenters pointed out that the image included a modern-day Jost, but not before the story had begun circulating on social media.
The image in question originated from an Oct. 11 “Weekend Update” segment in which co-anchor Michael Che razzed Jost with a doctored version of the infamous 1992 Mar-a-Lago party video showing Trump and Epstein socializing years before Epstein’s criminal cases came to light. Using artificial intelligence, Jost’s likeness was digitally inserted into the footage, laughing and dancing alongside the two men as if he had been present.
After the clip played, Jost visibly grimaced, shook his head, and glanced toward the audience before deadpanning, “Really excited for that to just be out there,” drawing laughs and underscoring the joke’s deliberately uncomfortable premise.
After Mediaite swapped out the image on its site, the Jost screen grab continued to proliferate via social media shares of the story, where embedded preview images still display the SNL gag rather than the corrected frame.
For the record, Jost was not at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Epstein. The original footage dates back more than three decades, when the “Weekend Update” co-anchor would have been ten years old.
Neither Mediaite nor Saturday Night Live has publicly commented on the mix-up, which appears to have stemmed from an errant image selection.
Get stories like this in your inbox: Sign up for LateNighter’s free daily newsletter.
He ought to sue the damn fools that have not issued a correction to the garbage that they publish.
I know: it’s a rhetorical question by now, but how can people be so stupid about their legal exposure?
America is being ruled by the rejects of Idiocracy!