Hillary’s Loss Inspired Samantha Bee
Samantha Bee did a special post-election edition of Full Frontal on Wednesday night, and, remarkably, she pulled off a positive show about what she considered “the Apocalypse” — i.e., the election of Donald Trump. Stephen Colbert was caught stunned and flat-footed as his live Showtime special received the news in real time. But Bee had a few extra hours to think about the Republican candidate’s win, and she directed her disappointment and ire outward, toward action and vigorous protest.
Bee launched her half-hour with a montage of herself, racing to cast her vote and, along the way, high-fiving folks such as Fox News’ Shepard Smith, deposed late-night host Larry Wilmore, and Yahoo News’ Katie Couric. This was all revealed as being just a dream, of course. Back in her studio to confront her new waking nightmare, Bee said, “It’s pretty clear who ruined America: white people.” She marshaled voting statistics from Election Day to support this thesis. “The Caucasian nation showed up in droves to vote for Trump,” she concluded. Amidst her lamentation, she did remind us that there are still good things in America, including “Shonda Rhimes shows, peanut butter, [and] Lin-Manuel Miranda rap-weeping at awards shows.”
One startling segment was an attempt to find out exactly what policies Trump has put forward. What better time to do that, she said, “than the day after he’s been elected?” And so Bee had a correspondent interview Pratik Chougule, a man who worked in the Washington, D.C., “Trump policy office.” Chougule said he quit after his work was ignored and — following what Bee pointed out was a certain Trumpian pattern — never paid for by Trump and his campaign.
Still, Bee remained positive. She put up a giant “2018” sign behind her, and exhorted her viewers to aim to alter the future. “We are going to get up, change our Pampers and push on through,” she said. It was just the kind of partisan comedy that Trump in his pre-election evenings might have found worthy of a hostile tweet or two.
Full Frontal With Samantha Bee airs Mondays at 10:30 p.m. on TBS.
