A coalition of protest groups planned to rally against Donald Trump outside Rockefeller Center on Saturday night, denouncing Saturday Night Live for featuring the presidential candidate. One group, meanwhile, offered a “bounty” to anyone who would disrupt the taping live from New York. 
 
 “We’re hoping that somebody in the audience stands up and calls him a racist,” Luke Montgomery, the organizer of a political action committee behind the bounty, told the Guardian. 
 
 Protest groups unaffiliated with Montgomery’s Pac have banded together after the comedy show booked Trump as host, protesting at a Trump tower and at NBC headquarters. 
 
 The billionaire, reality television personality and Republican White House hopeful provoked outrage with a June speech that accused Mexican immigrants of “bringing crime, they’re rapists”. He has nevertheless dominated the polls for months, exasperating GOP leaders and Hispanic Americans alike with his plan to deport 11 million people. 
 
 Several networks, including SNL’s parent, NBC Universal, severed ties with billionaire over the remarks. Pro-immigration activists with America’s Voice brought a petition to NBC’s studios on Wednesday, presenting the network with more than 500,000 signatures petitioning it to disinvite Trump. 
 
 Earlier this week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also sent a letter to the show, asking producers to disinvite the billionaire and saying his “demonizing Latinos and immigrants has created fear within these communities around the country”. 
 
 Several organizations, including pro-immigration Make the Road New York and the League of United Latin American Citizens, planned to protest again on Saturday night. A Pac called DeportRacism.com has offered $5,000 in cash to anyone on set or in the audience who disrupted the program by denouncing Trump. 
 
 “If he were to call black Americans rapists, murderers and drug dealers, that woud not fly,” Montgomery said from his home in Mexico. “So why is it OK that he would say that about Latinos? Saturday Night Live is really disgusting for having him on.” 
 
 
 
 Saturday Night Live had increased security measures, according to Montgomery, who said he remained hopeful that someone would manage to heckle the billionaire at least in earshot of microphones. The Hollywood Reporter noted that audience members have to pass through higher levels of security when presidential candidates appear on the show, but that six protesters did manage to disturb a broadcast in 1992. 
 
 NBC and SNL have declined to comment on the contradiction between the decision to cancel contracts with Trump and the decision to feature him on a marquee program. 
 
 
 
 Protest organizer Santiago Cejudo said in a statement that the group hopes to use Trump’s appearance to denounce his positions. 
 
 “It’s 2016, and Trump needs to hear that you can’t win the White House without the brown vote,” he said. 
 
 Trump dismissed the protesters earlier in the week, saying their demonstrations would only create more publicity. 
 
 “Ratings will go even higher than they are going to be,” he said at a press conference. “It’s going to be one of their highest-rated shows ever and they’re very excited about it.” 
 
 Other groups have accused NBC of giving Trump the equivalent of an extended campaign ad and legitimizing his remarks. One protester, Karina Garcia, told the network’s news arm racism was “like a tumor that if you ignore it, it actually spreads”. 
 
 “It’s unconscionable that they would do this, that they would give him this stage,” she told NBC News, which has reported the protests despite the network’s official silence. 
 
 More than 65 prominent Latinos condemned Trump in a joint statement on Friday, saying his “hate speech appeals to xenophobia, sexism and political intolerance; it recalls historical campaigns against other ethnic groups that led to millions of deaths”. 
 
 On Friday the actor John Leguizamo told Yahoo News he would not watch SNL anymore. 
 
 “You’re celebrating someone who has said some horrible things,” he said. “If he had said those things about any other ethnic group, he would not be on SNL.” 
 
 Trump’s current rival at the top of the Republican polls, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, said in October he would never appear on Saturday Night Live. 
 
 “I think the presidency of the United States is a very serious thing,” he told Bloomberg Politics. “I don’t even want to begin to put it in the lightness of comedy.” 
 
 SNL’s decision to book Trump as host has largely been perceived as a ploy to win high ratings, which have eluded the comedy show in recent years. The show broke its rating records in 2008 when vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared alongside comedian and writer Tina Fey, who played her in a skit. 
 
 Trump has promised huge ratings for his appearance, and said that were Carson to host the show, “nobody would watch”. ||||| Protesters disrupted a broadcast Sharon Stone hosted in 1992, and despite a Secret Service security detail and rigorous audience-vetting process, the controversial candidate could spark similar outbursts on live TV. 
 
 In 1992, during a monologue delivered by Sharon Stone spoofing her infamous crotch-baring scene from Basic Instinct, six protesters lurking in the audience of Saturday Night Live surged toward the stage. They were opposing "Hollywood's homophobia and misogyny as exemplified in the film," they later explained. (Stone played a bisexual murder suspect.) 
 
 The group was stopped by NBC guards before they could get there, but their voices could be heard on the broadcast. The four men and two women were held by security until police arrived and were later charged with disorderly conduct and harassment. Stone, for her part, "wasn't flustered at all," according to one eyewitness. 
 
 That incident was an isolated one at SNL. But despite the addition of a Secret Service security detail to an already rigorous audience-vetting process, history runs perhaps its strongest risk of repeating itself Nov. 7 when the controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump takes the stage as host. 
 
 And heckling will happen, if Luke Montgomery has anything to do with it. The Los Angeles-based activist and founder of the anti-Trump campaign Deport Racism 2016 is offering $5,000 to anyone in the studio audience heard saying "deport racism" or "Trump is a racist" on the air. The group is one of several protesting Trump's SNL appearance over "racist and xenophobic language" they say he's used throughout his campaign — with Latinos and Latino-Americans targeted in particular. Montgomery's is the only group, however, that is not calling on the network to cancel his appearance, but rather is encouraging hecklers to infiltrate and hijack the event. 
 
 "They're doing it for ratings," Montgomery tells The Hollywood Reporter. "It's a pretty crass game that they're playing. And we are going to try to steal their thunder and steal the spotlight." 
 
 Just how big a spotlight? It's impossible to predict, but the ratings high watermark for the show involved another highly controversial Republican candidate: Sarah Palin's 2008 appearance opposite doppelganger Tina Fey drew an astounding 17 million viewers in the first half-hour. 
 
 Montgomery says the response to his offer has been enthusiastic, but he won't reveal specifics as to how many people have said they will try to penetrate the taping at 30 Rockefeller Center or how they intend on going about it. "We're really hopeful," he says. "I can't really tell you much more than that. We don't want to compromise any plans that are being made." 
 
 Representatives for SNL are tight-lipped about what security measures are being taken for Trump's appearance. A New York Police Department spokesman tells THR that "adequate security" measures will be in place. The Secret Service, which now follows Trump on the campaign trail, did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 If the procedure is anything like those put in place for Hillary Clinton's appearance on the Oct. 3 season premiere, potential protesters will have to cross two security checkpoints. According to one frequent SNL attendee, audience members who arrive at 30 Rock for both the dress rehearsal and live taping are placed into one of several efficiently run lines: There's a VIP line, a line for people seated on the floor (closest to the stage) and a standby line. 
 
 After moving through a metal detector and checking in with a NBC employee, visitors are handed a ticket and given a wristband. They are then loaded onto an elevator bound for Studio 8H. At regular tapings, after getting off on the eighth floor, they are then instructed not to use cameras or smartphones during the taping. Their ticket is then taken from them — no souvenirs, sorry — and they are guided to a seat. 
 
 During the season-opener featuring Clinton, however, there was another checkpoint on the eighth floor, where Secret Service agents patted audience members down, scanned them with metal-detector wands and thoroughly rummaged through their handbags. 
 
 About 40 people get seats on the floor, the section directly in front of the stage where the band sits and the opening monologue is delivered. The seats are about eight feet from the host's mark, and anyone sitting there during the live broadcast could easily access Trump and get in front of the cameras. 
 
 The rest of the theater's 200-odd seats are in the stands, where access is close to impossible. But, like the Stone protesters in 1992, their voices could be heard by millions of people. (Not West Coasters, however. The Stone protest — as well as Sinead O'Connor's infamous tearing up of a photo of the Pope, which occurred just six months later — were both scrubbed from the later feed.) 
 
 Despite all these precautions, however, there is virtually nothing that NBC can do to prevent determined protesters from interrupting the show with their voices — the one thing no metal detector or frisking can keep from entering the studio. 
 
 "Live television is live television," Montgomery says. "It may have a delay, but it's still live. We're hoping someone can throw Trump off his game."
– Donald Trump's much-hyped Saturday Night Live appearance is this weekend, and it seems one protest group is actually excited for it. "They're doing it for ratings," Luke Montgomery tells the Hollywood Reporter. "We are going to try to steal their thunder and steal the spotlight." Montgomery's group, Depart Racism 2016, is offering $5,000 to anyone in the SNL studio audience who calls Trump a racist live on air. "We're hoping someone can throw Trump off his game," he says. The Guardian reports Trump earned the fury of Latinos, activists, and others when he called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and accused them of "bringing crime" to the US. “If he were to call black Americans rapists, murderers, and drug dealers, that would not fly,” Montgomery tells the Guardian. “So why is it OK that he would say that about Latinos?" While multiple groups will be protesting outside the studio, there actually is a chance that protest could bleed into the audience. According to the Reporter, protesters successfully interrupted a Sharon Stone-hosted episode of SNL in 1992 to condemn Hollywood homophobia and misogyny.