Stephen Colbert: Florida governor DeSantis ‘doesn’t care if his voters live or die’
Stephen Colbert kicked off Thursday’s Late Show with a little media inside baseball: the New York Times launched “18+ subscriber-only newsletters”, according to a tweet by media insider Mat Yurow. “That’s right, y’all, adults-only content for 18 and over,” Colbert joked. “It’s the New York Times … after dark. They’re slightly changing their masthead: ‘All the nudes that’s fit to print.’”
Yurow subsequently deleted his tweet, and added: “To be clear, I got lazy and should have said ‘at least 18 newsletters.’ NYT is not getting into porn.”
“But if the New York Times isn’t your thing, you’ve still got the Washington Post,” said Colbert. “After all, their slogan is ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness, but Bangs with the Lights On.’”
Meanwhile, “when it comes to Covid, the news should be R-rated for ‘Are we ever going to get out of this?’” Colbert continued, as coronavirus case numbers rise dramatically in the south, a region with some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. “You can read all about it in the classic southern novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Giving It Medical Advice from Facebook,” Colbert quipped.
Florida alone accounts for nearly one in five US Covid cases, but the surge “doesn’t seem to concern” Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said Colbert. After Joe Biden said those who refused to fight the coronavirus with preventive measures should “get out of the way” of those who would, DeSantis said: “I am in the way to block too much interference from the federal government.” Asked for comment, the US president replied: “Governor who?”
“Ha ha ha, but come on, Mr President, show some respect – he should be addressed by his full title: Governor who doesn’t care if his voters live or die,” joked Colbert.
Florida has requested hundreds of ventilators from the federal government’s national supply, which “must have been an awkward call”, said Colbert, considering that last week, DeSantis told Biden via reporters: “I don’t want to hear a blip about Covid from you.”
“Well, Governor, looks like it’s your turn to eat blip,” Colbert retorted.
Seth Meyers
“The lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election is the central animating belief of Republican politics today,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, “which is why GOP state legislatures in states like Georgia and Texas have been racing to pass voter suppression laws despite zero evidence of any widespread fraud.”
Georgia’s SB 202, passed by Republicans in March, enacted significant hurdles for voting in the state: it requires voters to submit ID information with both an absentee ballot request and the ballot itself, limits the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, allows for unlimited challenges to a voter’s qualifications, cuts the runoff election period from nine to four weeks, and shortens the amount of time voters have to request an absentee ballot.
The law also allows the state election board, which is dominated by Republicans, to seize control of county boards, allowing them to disqualify voters, move polling precincts, and potentially refuse to certify the results.
“Remember how Trump called the Georgia secretary of state and tried to badger him into magically finding enough votes to change the outcome? Well, basically Republicans in Georgia made it easier for him to succeed next time,” Meyers explained. “That’s where we’re at right now. Republicans saw a guy possibly commit a crime and decided to make it easier for him to pull it off.
“It’s like if there was a rash of car break-ins in your neighborhood, and the town council responded by outlawing the club,” he added.
In other legal news, a federal judge appointed by Trump ruled that three defamation lawsuits against “three Trump-adjacent crazy people” – Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and the MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell – can go forward. Dominion Voting Systems is seeking billions of dollars in damages for their false accusations of election fraud. “OK, there are only two plausible explanations for what happened here,” Meyers said. “Either a federal judge appointed by President Trump ruled that unfounded claims of election fraud made by three Trump allies were not exempt from defamation laws.
“Or … Hugo Chavez teamed up with China and the CIA to use Italian military satellites to hack the judges’ computer and alter his opinion, which was then printed out on paper, smuggled in from China, and covered in bamboo fibers,” he joked, referencing some of the Trump allies’ more deranged conspiracy theories.