Samantha Bee: 'Being a racist monster isn't a mental illness'
Samantha Bee: ‘It’s the guns, stupid’
It’s been mere days since the backto-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that killed 31 people last weekend, and the nation is “so sick of living in fear for no goddamn good reason”, said Samantha Bee on Full Frontal, especially when “it’s very clear what the problem is.”
That problem, Bee explained, is guns – though you wouldn’t know from the president, who said in a national address on Monday that mental illness pulled the trigger, not the gun.
Bee called bullshit: “The gun did put the bullets into people. Mental illness did not.”
Bee reminded the audience that the shooter in El Paso, who posted a screed condemning Hispanic immigrants shortly before opening fire in a Walmart, had no known history of mental illness. “Being a racist monster isn’t a mental illness – in fact, you can be one and be a very stable genius,” Bee said, in reference to one of Trump’s most famous self-aggrandizing tweets.
“Painting mass shooters as mentally ill is unfair to the vast majority of mentally ill people who aren’t stocking up on killing machines,” Bee continued. “It would be like if I assumed that you were all feeble-minded scrotes who could only manage an erection while stroking a gun,” she added over a photo of Trump and the Fox News host Steve Doocy.
“Stop trying to make this problem more complex than it is,” she urged. “We know what causes mass shootings and you do too: it’s the guns, stupid.”
Bee then directed her fury at the Republican lawmakers dragging their feet on federal gun laws, and particularly the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who has stalled a background checks bill despite bipartisan support.
“Republicans can’t even consider gun legislation because they’re afraid the NRA will attack them, which is a really horrible reason to let innocent people die,” Bee said. “They are endangering all of America to appease a group that has fewer than 5 million members,” or just 1.5% of the total US population.
And yet, Bee concluded, we continue to entertain complex solutions for a simple problem. “Trump and the Republicans have laid out a clear solution to end gun violence: first, cure the mental illness they invented. Then, get rid of video games, the internet, transgender people, same-sex marriage, drag queens, marijuana, kneeling athletes and Barack Obama, and while we’re at it, all embrace Jesus Christ as our savior.”
Bee had her own proposal: “Get rid of the guns. If not, come November 2020, we’ll just get rid of you.”
Stephen Colbert: ‘The devil on one shoulder and himself on the other’
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert acted as interpreter for the president as he prepared to visit mourners in El Paso and Dayton. For example, Trump answered a question on whether his rhetoric contributes to mass shootings by claiming that, in fact, it brings people together.
“Yes, I believe my rhetoric brings people together into a huge, angry mob chanting ‘Send her back,’” Colbert translated in the president’s voice. “And it’s not easy to get a group of old white people to chant in rhythm.”
Colbert then turned to a scathing review of the president’s post-tragedy behavior by former vice-president Joe Biden. At a campaign stop in Iowa this week, Biden lamented that “our president has aligned himself with some of the darkest forces in this nation.”
“Wrong,” Colbert responded as Trump. “I align myself with the whitest forces in this nation. Come on, Joe, at least read my Twitter manifesto.”
Biden also said there had been “no evidence that the presidency has awakened his conscience in the least.”
“I’ve got some bad news, Joe,” Colbert said. “His conscience isn’t sleeping; it’s dead. They sent his conscience to a farm upstate. Instead of a conscience, Trump’s got the devil on one shoulder and himself on the other.”
Seth Meyers: ‘What other kind? The Bourne Supremacy?’
On Late Night, Seth Meyers demonstrated zero patience for the president’s teleprompted sympathy. “Of course, we all know by now that when Trump reads something from a teleprompter, he doesn’t actually mean it. More often than not, it’s the first time he’s even seeing it,” he said.
“And yet, Trump’s aides and even some in the media are actually trying to pretend that this is a speech we were supposed to take seriously and that Trump actually meant what he said despite everything we know about him from his campaign, his presidency and most of his adult life.”
That would include tweets from the president on Wednesday mocking the Democratic presidential candidate and El Paso native Beto O’Rourke, who Trump told to be quiet.
“You don’t get to follow an insane screed mocking his name and his standing in the polls with ‘respect the victims and be quiet’,” said Meyers. “That’s like if a librarian got up and screamed, ‘EVERYONE KEEP YOUR FUCKING VOICES DOWN.’”
So far this week, Meyers continued, Trump deflected any responsibility his racist rhetoric may have on mass shootings; when asked directly if he was concerned about white supremacy, the president responded vaguely: “I am concerned about the rise of any group of hate … whether it’s white supremacy or any other kind of supremacy.”
Meyers was incredulous. “What other kind of supremacy? The Bourne Supremacy?”