Looks like someone at the White House is a Saturday Night Live fan. For the second time in a week, the Trump administration has lifted footage from the show for a pro-ICE message posted to its social media pages.
Late last week, the administration posted a video that included part of a Season 51 promo with Sabrina Carpenter and Marcello Hernández. Now it has gone back to the well, this time pulling from Season 48’s “Big Boys” music video, the Keke Palmer–SZA–fronted pretape that became a viral hit.
The original sketch—which leaned hard into “cuffing season” jokes and spawned a wave of TikTok trends—is widely seen as one of SNL’s breakout music videos of that era of SNL. The White House’s version, however, reframes the joke entirely, setting the song to a thirty second reel of ICE officers conducting arrests, posted with the caption, “We heard it’s cuffing szn. Bad news for criminal illegal aliens. Great news for America.”
WE HEARD IT'S CUFFING SZN. ⛓️
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 9, 2025
Bad news for criminal illegal aliens. Great news for America. pic.twitter.com/cuXCdJjxWY
On Wednesday, SZA, who voiced the hook in the orginal sketch, criticized the administration for using her performance without permission. “White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK … inhumanity + shock and aw tactics,” she wrote on X, calling the post “evil n boring.”
Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom—as he’s wont to do recently—trolled The White House with a “cuffing season” video of his own, depicting Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Stephen Miller wearing handcuffs outside a courthouse.
