John Mulaney Landed In Serious Hot Water Over This SNL Joke

President Donald Trump is no fan of Saturday Night Live — he's certainly made that clear enough on Twitter. "It's truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over,'" he tweeted last year, and also threatened to go after the late-night comedy skit show in 2017 (per People). The dislike clearly is mutual, with the show's writers and Trump stand-in Alec Baldwin creating a "firehose" of material during the 45th president's term, Vox reported. But did John Mulaney cross the line in February when he appeared on the show and referenced the murder of Julius Caesar's death? Apparently — because the Secret Service investigated him after this remark, he shared recently on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live.

"The joke was about how it was a leap year and leap year had been started by Julius Caesar to correct the calendar and another thing that happened with Caesar was that he was stabbed to death by a bunch of senators 'cause he went crazy," Mulaney explained to Jimmy Kimmel. "And I said, 'That's an interesting thing that could happen.'"

According to Mulaney, the Secret Service opened a file on him because of this joke. But, as he pointed out to Kimmel, any connection between what he said on the February 29 episode had only an "elliptical" connection to Trump. The actual comments that drew concern referenced events that took place thousands of years ago. "Leap Year began in the year 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar. This is true. He started the Leap Year in order to correct the calendar and we still do it to this day," Mulaney said in his monologue. "Another thing that happened under Julius Caesar was he was such a powerful maniac that all the senators grabbed knives and they stabbed him to death. That'd be an interesting thing if we brought that back now," he concluded (per Deadline).

While it was a bit unnerving to get contacted by the Secret Service, Mulaney said the agents he spoke with were "nice," and he did not believe they actually considered him a menacing force who could do any harm to the commander in chief. "In terms of risk assessment, no one who's ever looked at me has thought I'd registered above a one," Mulaney told Kimmel. But, just to be sure, they did ask him if he was writing a "manifesto" that they should worry about. To which Mulaney responded, "I said, 'No, I have bad writing habits, I could never pound out a manifesto.'"