Katie Rich Still Listed As ‘SNL’ Writer On NBC Media Website: Barron Trump Tweet Brings #FireKatieRich Petition – 68,000 Sigs

People online have been closely following the case of Katie Rich, a former (or current) SNL writer who had her name removed from the SNL credits of the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live, as reported by the Inquisitr. Whether or not this means that Katie was actually fired from SNL — or whether Rich was simply put on hiatus from SNL until the fervor over Katie’s tweet about 10-year-old Barron Trump being the country’s first homeschool shooter dies down — remains to be seen, because NBC isn’t talking about Katie.

‘SNL’ Removes Katie Rich From Writing Credits: https://t.co/HiYrOfqqte

— TheGrammarDiva (@TheGrammarDiva) January 23, 2017

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Rich did not respond to their request for an interview — and NBC had “no comment” about Katie’s employment status. Therefore, it is not known whether or not the calls from people who’ve signed a Change.org petition calling for Rich’s firing from SNL and NBC have been successful or not. According to the NBC Universal Media Village website, Rich is still listed as one of the writers for SNL. Either Katie is listed therein because of Rich’s previous writing credits for the current season of SNL — or due to Katie’s writing credits with SNL since 2013. It could simply mean that the webmaster for that site hasn’t gotten around to deleting Katie’s name as a current writer for SNL from the website — as was done when Rich’s name was removed from the writing credits after the most recent SNL episode that aired on Saturday, January 21.

As noted by NBC, Katie is an Emmy Award-nominated writer — with Rich listed as one of those who won a nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for SNL. As of this writing, the Change.org petition titled “NBC Fire Katie Rich” has gained more than 68,000 signatures.

The petition speaks about bullying in terms of what Katie tweeted about Barron.

“Ironically, following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, one of NBC’s employees Katie Rich, from SNL, tweeted about the President’s youngest son. Rich tweeting ‘Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter.’ Three hours later she deleted her tweet. Barron Trump is a 10-year-old boy and Donald Trump’s youngest child with wife, Melania Trump. He attends the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in Manhattan. He is fluent in English and Slovene. Melania throughout the Trump campaign has said she wanted to keep Barron out of the public eye and as such Barron made a total of three appearances on his father’s campaign trail.”

Prior to Rich’s unfortunate tweet, Rosie O’Donnell faced backlash as well regarding her comments about Barron.

The petition touched on the criticism that Elizabeth Lauten received, as reported by the Washington Post, when Elizabeth criticized the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Obama. Lauten received heat by quipping about how Lauten felt the Obama daughters acted at the annual White House turkey pardon. Elizabeth even criticized their clothing choices. As a result, Lauten resigned from her role as communications director for Rep. Stephen Lee Fincher.

Now that the SNL writer who is Rich saw fit to tweet about Barron, the backlash against Katie was strong. One tweet — which was actually a comment on a different tweet — has caused Katie to go into hiding, deleting her Facebook and Twitter accounts. As a result, hashtags like #firekatierich and #SNLstopthehatedumpkate are mentioned in the petition.

President Trump can be seen in the top photo above, with wife Mrs. Melania Trump, and their son Barron. Mr. Trump was signing his cabinet nominations into law, on Friday, January 20, in the President’s Room of the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington. It was the same day that Katie made her comment about Barron — one that Rich likely regrets.

[Featured Image by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Images]