Jeremy Culhane’s Elon Musk Impersonation Takes Aim at Midterm Spending on ‘SNL’

Jeremy Culhane brought a chaotic version of Elon Musk to the “Saturday Night Live” Weekend Update desk, where the sketch made light of the billionaire’s political spending and a difficult week for his business headlines. Playing Musk, the SNL featured player repeatedly tried to steer the conversation toward a car mishap instead of answering Colin Jost’s questions. Jost opened by noting that the real Musk had spent nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates, including in Texas, where many statewide races went to Democrats. Culhane’s character dodged the point, insisting that the news was really about his car flipping “like a Hot Wheel.” When Jost followed up about reports that production of Tesla’s Cybertruck had been halted, the comic Musk returned to the same story, boasting about the imagined incident rather than addressing the question. The character’s rambling performance also pictured himself hanging out with Jost and Michael Che, then imagining his leather jacket transforming into armor as a crowd cheered his name. Jost responded with a pointed recap: Musk had moved to Texas and shifted companies there after criticizing California’s Democratic leadership, only to see Texas politics move in the opposite direction. The joke suggested that the change could complicate his hopes of avoiding taxes. Culhane’s Musk answered with a wounded “Ouchie,” then called Jost his “poorest friend.” The sketch continued with a riff on Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot, as the character asked it to generate insults about him. The article describes the bit as a send-up of Musk’s public persona and recent headlines, with Culhane’s deliberately scattered delivery keeping the focus on the contrast between the real-world questions and the fictional character’s evasions.