Samantha Bee took aim at Donald Trump’s inauguration, calling out his “exquisitely tender ego” after he defended the low attendance.
The host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee joked: “There was so much empty space it’s amazing no one declared manifest destiny on the uncolonized end of the National Mall.”
She also spoke about his alarming speech, which she credited entirely to Trump’s senior adviser Steve Bannon. “President Trump delivered his pet frog’s ‘morning in dystopia’ speech to a mall that had more empty white space than the Republican plan to replace Obamacare,” she said.
The overtones of his “America first” rhetoric led Bee to make a correlation with much of the messaging used by the Nazis. “Are you the only 70-year-old man in America who doesn’t watch the History Channel?” she asked.
She also went back to the night before to remember his inaugural concert, which failed to attract the big stars who had been invited to perform. “The concert was a lot like Woodstock in that it often felt like we’d all eaten the brown acid,” she said. She played footage of the Trumps looking crestfallen and joked: “I know our country is horribly divided, but for a moment I felt a kinship with the Trump family and their palpable heartfelt boredom with 3 Doors Down.”
In summary, Bee said: “Trump’s concert was like his cabinet: male, overwhelmingly white and devoid of A-list talent.”
Bee spent time discussing the impressive turnout for the Women’s March, which was deemed a bigger success than the inauguration itself. “Going to the Women’s March was like waking up from a nightmare to find that the monster was real but all your friends were there with sticks and torches and unflattering hats to beat back the darkness. If only we’d known sooner that all you have to do to get white women to show up to a protest is to give them a craft,” she said.
She took aim at the rightwing coverage of the event where pundits failed to understand why women were marching in the first place. “Our executive branch is in the hands of a septuagenarian size queen and a corn-fed fertility cultist who calls his wife mother, so forgive us if we’re a little worried about getting zapped back to Pleasantville,” she said.
