Michael Che Wipes Instagram Following Simone Biles Jokes
Saturday Night Live Weekend Update host Michael Che has come under fire for a string of jokes shared to his Instagram targeted towards Olympic gymnast Simone Biles. On Thursday evening, Che posted several messages about Biles, who withdrew from the U.S. gymnastics team before the finals at the Tokyo Olympics for mental health reasons.
In a series of Instagram stories — which have since been deleted — Che wrote about feeling the urge to make jokes about Biles, defaulting to sharing others’ jokes instead. The Twitter account BallerAlert screenshotted some of the messages before Che removed them. “Man, I wanna make fun of Simone Biles,” the first post reads. Che then says that he’s “going to the cellar tonight” to get the comedic material out of his system.
One of the jokes Che shared to his account is pointed towards Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of girls and women. Another is about Biles herself. Later, Che claimed his Instagram account had been “hacked.” Then, he turned the attention to rapper DaBaby, who is in the news for making a series of misinformed remarks about HIV:
Some of Che’s followers did not respond well to his jokes, with several activists slamming the comedian on Twitter. The resulting backlash caused Che to wipe his Instagram clean. His page still exists, as do his 628 thousand followers, but he is not following anyone in return. All of his posts — including those he’s been tagged in — have been removed.