Colin Jost wasted little time getting to the point when a familiar billionaire showed up at the Weekend Update desk. In the latest SNL Weekend Update Elon Musk sketch, featured player Jeremy Culhane portrayed the Tesla and SpaceX chief as visibly rattled by the midterm results, and Jost opened with a blunt summary of the situation: the real Musk had poured roughly $500 million into Republican campaigns, only to watch the outcomes go the other way.
The segment, which aired during the Nov. 7 broadcast, centered on Tuesday’s midterm elections and the gap between Musk’s financial commitment and the results it produced. Jost’s question to his guest was direct, noting that Musk had been in the news for spending half a billion dollars on the midterms. What followed was a version of Musk who seemed unable to process the scale of the loss.
A Texas-Sized Return on Investment
According to the segment, Musk’s spending was concentrated on Republican candidates, with particular attention to his home state of Texas. The sketch leaned on the contrast between that investment and the election outcomes: most of Texas’s statewide races flipped to Democratic winners. For a figure known for framing his ventures around ambitious returns, the midterm cycle offered a different kind of ledger.
The real Musk, as the segment described, had committed nearly $500 million to Republican causes and candidates. That figure became the punchline’s anchor, a number large enough to invite scrutiny even before the results were tallied. The sketch did not dwell on the mechanics of the spending or the specific races beyond the statewide in Texas, keeping its focus on the mismatch between the money and the outcome.
Culhane's Musk Faces the Music
Culhane, a featured player on the show, played the role as a man caught off guard by the very results he had tried to influence. The Weekend Update format gave the bit its structure: Jost as the straight man, pressing for an explanation, and Culhane’s Musk as the guest who would rather be anywhere else. The humor came less from policy details than from the awkwardness of a high-stakes bet gone wrong in public.
The segment fit the show’s long tradition of inviting impressions of public figures to the Update desk and letting the anchor ask the questions the audience is already thinking. In this case, the question was simple: what happens when half a billion dollars does not buy the outcome you wanted? The sketch’s answer was to let the silence and the squirming do the work.
Why the Sketch Landed
Weekend Update has often used its desk segments to process the week’s political news, and the midterms gave the show a natural target. Musk’s spending had already made him a central figure in the election’s financial story, particularly in Texas, where the statewide results ran against the candidates he backed. The sketch turned that into a compact piece of satire about influence, money and the limits of both.
The choice to have Jost lead with the half-billion-dollar figure rather than a policy debate kept the segment accessible. It did not require the audience to know the details of every race; the contrast between the spending and the Democratic sweep of Texas statewide contests was enough. Culhane’s performance added a layer of discomfort that made the premise work as comedy rather than commentary alone.
The Bottom Line
The midterm elections gave SNL a fresh angle on a familiar subject, and the Weekend Update team used it to skewer the gap between Musk’s investment and the results. With Jost asking the questions and Culhane’s impression absorbing the blows, the segment turned a costly political gamble into a few minutes of television that did not need to exaggerate the numbers to make its point. The real Musk spent nearly $500 million; the sketch simply let the outcome speak for itself.
