SNL’s Weekend Update Jokes About President Biden Dying: ‘I Wouldn’t Plan Too Far Ahead’

Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update mocked a raft of political figures, including one joke suggesting President Joe Biden should not “plan too far ahead.”

Dave Chappelle was the guest host on this week’s edition of Saturday Night Live and Black Star was the musical guest — a powerful pairing.

While many fans of the sketch show wait around just to see the musical guest, then catch the weekly nightly news parody anchored by Colin Jost and Michael Che, Chappelle’s outing was much-anticipated due to the controversy surrounding his appearance, which he obliquely addressed in his monologue.

Weekend Update became a mainstay of SNL from the very first episode — on October 11, 1975 — of what was then called simply NBC’s Saturday Night. Chevy Chase anchored solo, and opened the sketch with a gag about disappeared Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. In the early days, Weekend Update was also peppered with commercial parodies and other conventions of TV broadcasts.

The news parody has become a tentpole of the show. In a recent interview from Chris Wallace’s series Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace on HBO Max, onetime producer Dick Ebersol told Wallace that Weekend Update was key to keeping viewers tuned in late into the show.

One feature that has come to comprise half of the Update show-within-the-show — or more — are character pieces that feature guest commentators that you really don’t see on the news these days, but used to punctuate local broadcasts in the days of Gilda Radner‘s legendary bits.

The show also often welcomes a cast member to deliver a comic bit as themselves to deliver a comedy bit. But the roots of the segment — and the favorite part for many fans — are the rapid-fire gag news items delivered by the anchors.

This week, Che and Jost took on the familiar cast of midterm election characters like Herschel Walker and Blake Masters, but Che also let loose a ghoulish crack about the president.

“President Biden said he plans to run again in 2024, but won’t make a final decision until early next year. Because it’s like his doctor told him, ‘I wouldn’t plan too far ahead,'” Che said.

Watch just the jokes above via NBC’s Saturday Night Live.