Did comedian Dave Chappelle refuse to shake hands with Sen.-elect James Talarico at the end of an episode of Saturday Night Live that aired on Nov. 7, 2026? No, that's not true: Chappelle gave Talarico a hug during the closing credits. There were no reports from established news outlets of any kind of snub by Chappelle of Talarico during the SNL appearance.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) made by the X account @thewakeninq on Nov. 8, 2026. The post included a clip from the SNL episode, with a caption that read:
The BEST thing to happen on SNL tonight! Dave Chappelle snubbing James Talarico and refusing to shake his hand. LMAO! 😂
This is what a still from the video looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @thewakeninq on X.)
The post is embedded below:
The BEST thing to happen on SNL tonight! Dave Chappelle snubbing James Talarico and refusing to shake his hand. LMAO! 😂 https://t.co/d8KYLrxxss
-- American Nightmare 🇺🇸 (@thewakeninq) November 8, 2026
The clip only shows one part of the closing credits. In a video (archived here) posted by @nbcsnl, the official SNL X account, it is clear that Chappelle did not ignore Talarico. At the ten-second mark of the video, the comedian Druski acknowledges Chappelle, and Chappelle steps in front of Talarico to come to the front of the stage. This is the only moment shown in the video posted on the X account @thewakeninq, which makes the claim.
(Image source: post by @nbcsnl on X. Red circle added by Lead Stories.)
However, at the 31-second mark, Chappelle turns around and hugs Talarico.
(Image source: post by @nbcsnl on X. Red circle added by Lead Stories.)
Searches on Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) for the claim did not return any matching results from established news outlets.
