I remember some of his first appearances on SNL where he would wear a satellite dish on his head. Even that far back his spots were never particularly funny. He went downhill from there with his efforts at prime time television. His character was the same whenever I saw him - a poorly played sitcom side character that was stretched to a central role by adding additional "side character" material.
I stayed in this Saturday (first in a long time) because I had come back from a roadtrip that afternoon. I watched SNL for the first time in years. Al was doing one of these satellite bits on the "news".
He was "with the troops" in Iraq or Afghanistan. He was playing up the fact the the troops had been there so long that their wives were giving birth to babies that they had never seen. The bit closed with Axis Sally's old propaganda bit (unattributed of course) that one of the babies was conceived after the soldier went overseas.
These scum will ply their propaganda wherever they can to reduce morale. He may have made his joke from a studio with actors but it was still an ancient bit of propaganda that he spun.