A few weeks ago, it leaked that retired Easter bunny and current White House press secretary Sean Spicer wanted to show off some good sportsmanship (and/or his own special relationship with humor) by dropping a reference to Melissa McCarthy’s impression of him on Saturday Night Live into one of his daily briefings. Donald Trump reportedly nixed the idea, presumably on the grounds that it would damage his own efforts to destroy the long-running NBC sketch show through a measured combination of Twitter shouting and watching it religiously to see what they say about him next.
Spicer finally got his wish today, though, when he responded to a question about inaccuracies and mis-reporting in the president’s recent job numbers with a threat to “make the podium move.” That’s presumably a reference to a February episode of SNL, in which McCarthy ended the show’s cold open by driving a Segway disguised as Spicer’s podium into a crowd of hostile reporters. Humor experts in the audience might note that Spicer’s comment—which apparently got a big press room laugh—wasn’t so much a joke as the acknowledgement of the fact that a joke once happened, also known as the “Middle school dorks who’ve watched too much Monty Python” school of comedy. But still: as far as threats to physically attack the free press for questioning his boss‘ actions go, it definitely falls on the more humorous and whimsical side of the scales.