‘SNL’ writer Katie Rich apologizes for tweet on Barron Trump

SHARE ‘SNL’ writer Katie Rich apologizes for tweet on Barron Trump
katie_rich062216_61967602.jpg

“Saturday Night Live” writer Katie Rich. | Leslie Adkins/For the Sun-Times

UPDATED Jan. 23, 2:30 P.M.

“SNL” writer Katie Rich tweeted an apology via her Twitter account Monday afternoon, apologizing for her Barron Trump tweet.  She has also been suspended indefinitely from “SNL” according to a source familiar to the situation.

A Chicago writer on “Saturday Night Live” was absent from the show’s credits on this weekend’s episode, a day after her Twitter joke about Donald Trump’s 10-year-old son stirred outrage on social media.

Katie Rich had tweeted on Friday, the date of Trump’s presidential inauguration, that 10-year-old Barron Trump “will be this country’s first homeschool shooter.” The joke was not used on “SNL” or any of its social media outlets.

The tweet later disappeared but lived on in screenshots:

screen_shot_2017_01_23_at_11_34_49_am.png

Rich, a Weekend Update writer, had been a regular presence in the “SNL” credits until this weekend. NBC has not commented on her status with the show, and Rich could not be reached for comment. As of Monday, her Twitter account was locked down as private.

But in other corners of the Internet, from the rest of Twitter to NBC’s Facebook page to a petition with more than 30,000 signatures demanding her termination, Rich was the target of full-on social media wrath as commenters tore into her for making a punchline of a preteen.

Rich grew up near 80th and Pulaski and continued to reside in Chicago during her “SNL” tenure, living in temporary New York quarters during show weeks. A staff writer since December 2013 and a lifelong Cubs fan, she was one of the on-air backup singers when the team’s Dexter Fowler, David Ross and Anthony Rizzo celebrated their World Series victory by singing “Go Cubs Go” with Bill Murray on “SNL” in November.

RELATED: ‘I just fly back and forth’ between Chicago and ‘SNL,’ Katie Rich says Brown: Tweets cross the line — of civility and ideology 
Suburban school official quits after tweets on Women’s March

Before joining “SNL,” she was an actor who improvised at iO and was in the casts that wrote and performed three Second City mainstage shows.

Matters of taste aside, the tweet’s assumption that Barron Trump is home schooled was erroneous: He attends Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in New York.

The Latest
The Bears have spent months studying the draft. They’ll spend the next one plotting what could happen.
Woman is getting anxious about how often she has to host her husband’s hunting buddy and his wife, who don’t contribute at all to mealtimes.
He launched a campaign against a proposed neo-Nazis march at a time the suburb was home to many Holocaust survivors. His rabbi at Skokie Central Congregation urged Jews to ignore the Nazis. “I jumped up and said, ‘No, Rabbi. We will not stay home and close the windows.’ ”
That the Bears can just diesel their way in, Bronko Nagurski-style, and attempt to set a sweeping agenda for the future of one of the world’s most iconic water frontages is more than a bit troubling.