In light of Elon Musk’s “Nazi salute” controversy, Saturday Night Live’s Chloe Fineman is remembering the time she called him out for making her cry when he hosted the show.
“Remember when I got in trouble for calling out Mr. Nazi Salute?” the comedian shared in a Tuesday (January 21) Instagram Story. “Ya no regrets.”
Last November, Fineman, 36, alleged that the Tesla billionaire, who hosted the show in May 2021, brought her to tears after telling her, her script wasn’t funny.
“I was so excited, I came in, I asked if you had any questions and you stared at me like you were firing me from Tesla and were like, ‘It’s not funny.’ I waited for you to be like, ‘Ha ha, joke.’ No. Then you started pawing through my script, like flipping each page, being, like, ‘I didn’t laugh once, not one time,’” she shared in a since-deleted TikTok video.
Fineman said she ended up having a “really good time” performing the sketch, adding: “I thought you were really funny in it. But, you know, have a little manners here, sir.”
Musk later offered his side of the story, tweeting: “Frankly, it was only on the Thursday before the Saturday that ANY of the sketches generated laughs. I was worried. I was like damn my SNL appearance is going to be so f***ing unfunny that it will make a crackhead sober. But then it worked out in the end.”
He also responded to one X/Twitter user who wrote about Fineman: “She’s a professional comedy writer who cries when someone doesn’t think her jokes are funny? That’s funny.”
“Seriously [straight face emoji],” Musk replied.
Fineman’s recollection of their unpleasant interaction comes a day after Musk was accused of giving a “Nazi salute” during his speech at the Capitol One Arena to celebrate President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
While speaking to the crowd on Monday, the SpaceX CEO got extremely excited about the prospect of landing a man on Mars and planting an American flag. Pounding his chest, he shot his right arm in an angular motion toward the sky, saying he felt it in his “heart.” He then turned his back to the audience and repeated the gesture towards the American flag hanging over the stage.
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While several experts have declared his gesture a “Nazi salute,” many other observers have suggested that Musk was instead performing a “Roman salute” that soldiers in the ancient empire would use to greet their commanders as a show of respect and loyalty.
Musk responded to the criticism of the gesture in a post on X. “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is so tired,” he tweeted while reposting a message from 2022 in which he declared that he was no longer a Democrat and as a result was awaiting a “dirty tricks campaign.”
