Weekend Update Tackles Mangione Arrest, Drone Sightings

Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update covered the arrest of Luigi Mangione for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as well as dozens of drones flying over parts of New Jersey and the East Coast over the past few weeks.

Regarding Mangione, co-anchor Colin Jost joked, “This week, America continued the delicate, sensitive debate about who should play this guy in the Netflix miniseries.”

Jost then mentioned Mangione’s apparent manifesto targeting the health insurance company, which may have been motivated in part by a spinal condition that required surgery.

“After police arrested suspected CEO shooter Luigi Mangione, they found a note on him expressing anger at corporate America. Yet he went to Starbucks before the shooting and then got caught at McDonald’s,” Jost joked. “So maybe his greatest crime is hypocrisy.”

The McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was found, has been bombarded with one-star Yelp reviews after an employee called authorities when they recognized him — “to punish them for cheating,” as Jost put it. “First of all, who looks at Yelp reviews for McDonald’s? The only Yelp review of McDonald’s should be: ‘Was open. Five stars.”

As for the mysterious drones, which not even the FBI seems to know the source of, co-anchor Michael Che said he could rule out about half the population.

“Tensions surrounding drones flying over New Jersey continued to rise after a drone crashed into someone’s backyard, but at least now we know whoever’s flying them are those silly women, right?” he said out of the side of his mouth.

The pair then weighed in on some Trump-related headlines, the first being how the president-elect — who also became a felon in 2024 — was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Jost had a good reason for the publication’s decision: “Because no person on Earth has taken more of our damn time.”

Jost then riffed on the other news. “Trump also said on Friday that he would try to permanently end daylight saving time — by challenging the sun to a staring contest,” he joked, as an image on the screen showed Trump looking straight at the 2017 solar eclipse without protective glasses.

The episode ended with shots at two frequent targets: former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“It was announced that Matt Gaetz will host a new talk show on One America News Network called The Matt Gaetz Show,” Che said. “He gets to cover everything from quinceañeras to prom shakes.”

Che then noted how McConnell suffered minor injuries from a recent fall. “Luckily,” he responded, “he landed on his hard back.”