MAUREEN CALLAHAN knows exactly why Morgan Wallen stormed off SNL. No, it's not what you've read... and it'll leave half of America furious

Hey, SNL snobs — the joke's on you.

Morgan Wallen is one of the biggest stars in the world, but after he broke protocol on Saturday Night Live last weekend — rushing off stage as soon as credits rolled, rather than hugging it out with the cast and guest host Mikey Madison — insiders wasted little time trashing him.

'He was unprofessional the entire time and came in with a chip on his shoulder,' an SNL staffer told the Mail. 'He thought that he was this massive star that deserved to be treated as if they were lucky to have him and when he wasn't getting that he threw a tantrum.'

Oh, unlike other major guest hosts and SNL cast members? You mean to tell us that no one in the history of this show — Chevy Chase is but one example — has behaved like a prima donna?

Perhaps SNL insiders are complaining because Wallen is a country music artist who once rocked a mullet and appeals to middle America.

Ergo: He is MAGA. And we all know what coastal elites think about anyone who voted for Donald Trump.

The Mail's source admitted as much in the wake of SNL's cold open, a spoof of what went down in the leaked Signal group-chat scandal: A depiction of defense secretary Pete Hegseth drunkenly texting those attack plans to three teenage girls — a skit that may have angered the 31-year-old performer.

'Morgan wears his political affiliation on his sleeve,' this source said. 'But did not talk about it outright.'

Sounds pretty professional to me. But that doesn't seem to matter in the hallowed halls at 30 Rock, because, the source continued, Wallen 'is MAGA and everyone knows it'.

God forbid.

Perhaps Wallen walked off because he could sense the disdain dripping from the cast. Perhaps there were one too many smirks his way in the writer's room.

Perhaps he opted not to participate in a musical sketch about dimwit New York City hipsters waiting in line for metropolitan fixations like matcha and cronuts because his core audience wouldn't get it — or, worse, wouldn't find it funny.

More likely, having probably suffered backstage slings and arrows from the ultra-progressive SNL cohort, maybe Wallen decided to do the bare minimum rather than be a team player when he clearly wasn't wanted — his booking purely commercial.

'They had hopes [Wallen] would do the pre-tape and perhaps more,' another SNL insider said, 'but no joy.'

Let's talk joy, shall we?

SNL – which has spent this entire season celebrating its 50th anniversary with no shortage of specials, books, magazine articles and a concert at Radio City Music Hall – makes no secret of its political favorites, including that ostensible personification of 'joy', Kamala Harris.

How lightly and lovingly she, the queen of word salad, was mocked.

Joe Biden, so dangerously cognitively impaired, was played by SNL alum Dana Carvey as 'a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory' — to quote the official finding by Robert Hur that sent the left into paroxysm of outrage.

Other pets of producer Lorne Michaels who have never been touched by SNL's otherwise no-holds-barred writers include, but are not limited to:

Alec Baldwin, who savagely played Donald Trump until Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, a young wife and mother, on the set of 'Rust'.

Baldwin's wife Hilaria, who claimed for years to be Spanish, from Spain, until she was unmasked a few years ago as a privileged white woman from Boston named Hillary Thomas-Hayward.

Harry and Meghan.

Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 loss to Donald Trump wasn't pilloried — as it should have been — but mourned by former cast member Kate McKinnon, dressed as Hillary singing Leonard Cohen's classic 'Hallelujah'.

Yet these writers — and poor excuses for comics — have the nerve to think that they, and they alone, determine what America should find hilarious, or who is a worthy target for satire and who is untouchable.

Lorne Michaels, age 80, allowed Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, currently two of the most toxic people in show business, to use that live 50th anniversary show to rehab their image — as they seek to destroy Lively's director Justin Baldoni.

Funny stuff. Truly.

For those who would say Wallen had it coming — that he's been arrested before and was caught on tape using the N-word, which is truly terrible — remember that SNL still booked him.

So it was their job to treat Wallen right, or at least with a modicum of professionalism.

It's incredible to watch the hypocrisy on display. Just the other night, sainted SNL fixture Bill Murray, while promoting his new movie on Watch What Happens Live! — owned, just like SNL, by NBC's parent company — grabbed co-star Naomi Watts by the head and forcibly kissed her, on the mouth, for a lengthy amount of time.

What did Bill and host Andy Cohen do? Laugh, laugh, laugh.

These are the same people who preach to America about kindness, inclusivity, women's rights. About what to think and who to vote for.

But, sure, Morgan Wallen is the deplorable one here. He's the one who should be doubly castigated for posting a photo of his private plane with the caption 'Get me to God's country' after fleeing SNL.

Cast member Kenan Thompson — who has been on SNL forever, unwilling or unable to graduate like other cast members — claimed confusion over Wallen's post.

'You trying to say that we are not in God's country?' Thompson asked. 'We're all not under God's umbrella? That's not necessarily my favorite.'

Well, Kenan, sometimes you get what you give. And a show that treats its few MAGA viewers as dirt under your shoe sure doesn't feel like you think they, too, are under God's umbrella.

So take that fake sentiment, your doe-eyed act of wounded confusion, and try to make it funny.

Dare you.