Stephen Colbert: Biden ‘needs to change his slogan from ‘Build Back Better’ to ‘We Have the Meats!’’
Stephen Colbert lamented the inflation of food prices on Tuesday’s Late Show, specifically: meatflation, as prices for sirloin, boneless chunk roast and bacon have increased by 25%. In Canada, a rib roast could now cost as much as $100. “That’s ridiculous,” said Colbert. “A hundred dollars? The only hunk of Canadian meat worth that much is Ryan Gosling.”
But meat is only the “rib-tip of the iceberg”, as prices are increasing for everything from cooking oil to dairy to pizza ingredients, forcing many New York pizza shops to abandon the classic $1 slice. “It’s gotten so bad that Pizza Rat can only afford garlic knots,” Colbert joked.
The inflated meat prices have been a drag on Joe Biden’s approval ratings, now down to 38%, and a CNN poll found that the majority of Americans believe Biden isn’t paying attention to the nation’s most important issues. “Yes, he’s focused on things Americans don’t care about, like infrastructure,” Colbert observed. “He needs to change his slogan from ‘Build Back Better’ to ‘We Have the Meats!’”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah celebrated the passage of Biden’s $1.2tn infrastructure bill, which received support from 13 Republicans, to the chagrin of many colleagues. Donald Trump said Republicans who voted for the bill should be ashamed of themselves, while Representative Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called them “traitors” helping the communist takeover of America.
“Which I know sounds crazy, but think about it – how are Soviet tanks gonna invade America? Over the newly refurbished roads and bridges,” Noah joked. “That’s why you’ve gotta keep your roads and bridges broken, it’s called homeland security, people.”
It’s not just fellow lawmakers – Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan said he was harassed by constituents for
working with Democrats, with a voicemail calling him a “traitor” and a “piece of shit” whose family should die, among other insults.
“And they say political discourse is dead,” Noah joked. “This is really disturbing, because what kind of person leaves voicemails any more?
“This partisan anger, it’s happening over an infrastructure bill, people,” he added. “Infrastructure! I mean, I would get it if the new roads they were building all led to an abortion clinic, or if they were adding special carpool lanes for nonbinary people, but it’s just fixing things for everybody! So I don’t get the anger.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel updated viewers on the congressional inquiry into the insurrection on 6 January. On Monday, Team Trump asked a federal judge to prevent the records from being released, which the judge refused. “This could be bad for Donald Trump,” Kimmel explained. “If these documents are made public, we may finally know whether Trump and his associates were as involved in the events of January 6th as we already know they were.”
The congressional committee issued subpoenas on Tuesday for 10 associates of Donald Trump, on top of six subpoenas on Monday. “Congress wants them to provide testimony and to shed light on the war room that was assembled at the Willard hotel in DC, where Trump’s minions brainstormed ways to overturn the election,” Kimmel said. “Boy, if they do ever end up arresting Trump, they should let Hillary cuff him. Shouldn’t they, just for fun?”
Kimmel also touched on how Trump acolytes in the media have begun to spin the siege in January. “At first they seemed to agree that it was bad, but the new thing these rightwing cable channels are doing is treating these criminals who literally tried to overthrow our government, who if they weren’t white people with tattoos of Pepe the frog on their necks, Newsmax, Fox, OANN, they’d be calling for the death penalty,” he said. “Instead, they’re treating them like some kind of conscientious objectors, or something.”