Stephen Colbert: Georgia's primary 'tested negative for voting'
Stephen Colbert
“There’s an election coming up,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, “and we had a test run yesterday in the Georgia primary. And let’s just say: they tested negative for voting.” The election was a “catastrophe”, Colbert continued, in which lines stretched for blocks at dramatically reduced numbers of polling stations, and voters waited for up to four hours to cast ballots they were not confident would be counted.
The fiasco can be attributed to Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who is “already notorious for voter suppression because, as Georgia’s secretary of state during the 2018 election that he ran in and yet was somehow also in charge of, he purged more than 1.4 million voters from the rolls and held up tens of thousands of voter registration applications, mostly from African Americans,” Colbert explained. “So when it comes to exposing systemic racism, Brian Kemp has been whipping it out for years.”
Yesterday’s mess “is looking like a redo of 2018 voter-suppression tactics, and like any sequel, it’s a little on the nose”, said Colbert. When Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost to Kemp in 2018, got her absentee ballot in the mail, it arrived with a sealed return envelope, and she was unable to mail it back. “So not only do we have to deal with widespread voter suppression,” Colbert said, “evidently, some weirdo is going around licking people’s envelopes. One crisis at a time, 2020.”
Trevor Noah
“While all of this racial reckoning is going on, it’s really easy to forget that this is also an election year,” said Trevor Noah on the Daily Show in response to the disastrous Georgia primary on Tuesday, in which voter lines snaked through parking lots and down multiple blocks in the hot sun. “That doesn’t look like a voting day – that looked like, like the last scene in Us,” Noah said.
“Nobody should have to wait four hours to vote. This is an election, not the latest pair of Jordans.”
Noah called Georgia’s election an “unnecessary struggle” that went awry “because of everything” – namely, the coronavirus, which forced the state to reschedule the election twice, left it understaffed by inexperienced poll workers, and reduced the number of polling stations.
“You know, it’s funny how America has unlimited resources to make sure that countries around the world get democracy, but then America never seems to have the resources to make sure there’s democracy in America,” Noah said. “I mean, if Atlanta wants more voting resources, maybe they should just declare that they’re a country in the Middle East: ‘Yo so, we’re actually Afghanistan-lanta, so can we get some that democracy cash?’”
He concluded with a warning. After Georgia’s fiasco and numerous examples of election dysfunction in other states, “just like with coronavirus, America has an opportunity to heed the warnings before it’s too late. Because if this happens in November, with the presidency at stake? Best believe people are going to be fighting over a lot more than just toilet paper.”
Samantha Bee
After time off, Samantha Bee returned to Full Frontal with an emotional segment on the long, terrifying history of anti-Black police brutality in America. “It is so fucking frustrating that this keeps happening, and that it took a nine-minute video of a man being killed to get people to understand that this is an emergency,” Bee said of the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers.
“A sea change is happening, and it is step one, the first of many, to upend white supremacy,” Bee said of the subsequent nationwide protests. “We have to change the infrastructure of police and justice in this country. It all comes down to this: Black lives matter.”
Protests have erupted in America’s major cities and small town, “and to show how not brutally violent they are, the police have responded with absolutely brutal violence”, Bee said, citing numerous videos of police attacking otherwise peaceful protesters. “It is horrifying that the authorities are beating, gassing and running over peaceful protesters,” Bee said. “They’re so out of control, I’m surprised they didn’t ticket the people they ran over for scuffing up the paint job.”
Moreover, Bee continued, abuse in law enforcement is rarely met with accountability. Derek Chauvin, the officer who killed George Floyd, had at least 17 prior complaints against him – “I don’t know the right number of complaints it should take to get a police officer fired, but it definitely should not be more than the number of stamps to get a free smoothie at Jamba Juice,” Bee said. And of the more than 2,600 misconduct complaints against Minneapolis police officers since 2012, only 12 resulted in an officer being disciplined.
“It’s important that we’re talking about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but that’s only the first step,” Bee concluded. “We also need to be talking about Tony McDade, David McAtee, Michael Lorenzo Dean, Eric Reason, Atatiana Jefferson, Christopher Whitfield, Christopher McCorvey, Dominique Clayton, Pamela Turner, Botham Jean, Antwon Rose II, Stephon Clark, Ronell Foster, Aaron Bailey, Jordan Edwards, Alteria Woods, Paul O’Neal, Terence Crutcher, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Sylville Smith, Salvado Ellswood,” all names of Black people killed by police, which kept rolling as the screen faded to black.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers discussed troubling new polls for Trump, which found 47% t of Americans “strongly disapproved” of his handling of the protests. “Wow, it’s bad enough when the majority disapprove of you, but to have nearly half say they strongly disapprove of you must be depressing,” Meyers said. “It’s one thing if you pass a note to a classmate that says ‘do you like me?’ and they check no. It’s another thing if they write in: ‘I’d rather eat a burrito filled with dog turds.’”
Trump’s unpopularity is in stark contrast with the public approval for the protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd by four police officers in Minneapolis last month. “Majorities of Americans are finally coming around to the reality that acts of police violence against Black people aren’t just isolated incidents from a few bad apples,” Meyers said. “They’re part of a fundamentally corrupt system based on a history of racism and exploitation.
“There’s a point where you have to ask yourself, can it even be reformed?” Meyers added. “One bad flight, and you’re like ‘maybe we can make air travel better.’ But if every flight you take ends up in the Hudson River, you might think it’s time to defund Spirit Airlines.”
Which is why calls to defund the police – as in, to divert funding from police departments to other, more effective community solutions such as mental health care, social services and housing to decrease interactions between armed police and citizens – have soared in popularity, leaving “conservatives and many Democrats freaking out”. Meyers played clips of said freakouts, such as Tucker Carlson outlandishly claiming a “woke militia” would enforce “democratic party orthodoxy”.
“Let’s spend the money we’re lavishing on police departments on other nonviolent alternatives like mental health resources, substance abuse resources or, if Tucker Carlson’s the one calling, we can send the woke militia to force-feed him vegan sausage,” Meyers concluded. “Maybe he’ll like it – maybe that will be the end of it all.”