SNL Spoofs Anthropic CEO Before Trump AI Dinner

SNL's Weekend Update spoofed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, with Jane Wickline portraying him torn between polished reassurances and alarms on AI. Amodei is scheduled for his first one-on-one dinner with President Donald Trump on Sunday, September 27, 2026, after missing Thursday's state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping over a scheduling conflict. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson plan to meet top AI CEOs at the White House on Tuesday, September 29. Amodei briefed the UN Security Council on September 23 with OpenAI and Hugging Face executives. A Federal Appeals Court panel last week upheld Anthropic's February supply-chain risk designation. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 73% of Americans believe AI companies are not doing enough to prevent serious harm. CONTESTED: Axios called the dinner an indication of thawing relations between Anthropic and the administration; Gizmodo highlighted an anonymous official calling Amodei a weirdo, longstanding tensions, and the upheld risk designation. Amodei wrote that a swarm with greater capabilities but similar misalignment "could have caused catastrophic damage." Trump posted on Truth Social that backlash is a hoax-like rebrand and that the U.S. "will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry" while watching for BAD through existing courts. Bill Gates, in an interview aired Sunday, said he wants to meet Trump on AI and called for congressional legislation.