News Satire Roundup: May 14-May 18

Late night last night - didn't get around to posting.  Here's yesterday's News Satire Roundup, and I'll get to today's regularly scheduled post soon.

Sunday, May 14 – The show began with Comey, looking especially at Trump’s threatening tweets and the Lester Holt interview – I liked John’s observation about Trump’s need to display dominance, saying he’d gladly confess to murder if you claim the killer was someone stronger and smarter than him.  More on New Zealand, a minor feud with the prime minister over his comments on last week’s story.  John’s disgust at his Instagram shot of homemade pizza topped with canned spaghetti was great.  The main story was on dialysis.  John covered the good – it’s the one bit of health care the government has to pay for, prompting John to declare the kidneys the one “Canadian” organ in our bodies – and, unsurprisingly, the bad – much care for renal disease is in the hands of for-profit facilities that compromise patient care to maximize profits.  Thanks to John for introducing us to one such company’s bizarre, Musketeer-obsessed CEO.

Monday, May 15 – Oy.  First up, naturally, was Trump sharingclassified intelligence with the Russian ambassador.  I liked Trevor’s comment about Trump trying to impress them by proving he was the president, along with imagining the Russians realizing they didn’t have to plant bugs after all.  Good story on white supremacist protests against the removal of Confederate statues, with Michelle chiming in that, racism aside, we shouldn’t keep celebrating the Confederacy because America is all about the winning side.  I loved the short piece on recent cyber attacks on hospitals; comparing the levels of panic in British and American news coverage was great, and I laughed harder than I should’ve at Trevor pointing out the negligible attacks in Africa and calling the graphic a “reverse-Ebola map.”  Professor Timothy Snyder was the guest, discussing his new book on tyranny and the importance of learning from the mistakes of the past.

Tuesday, May 16 – As with the Comey firing, the latest Trump news was too recent to get into, but Trevor briefly assured us he’d get to it the next night before circling back to yesterday’s big news of Trump sharing classified intelligence to impress the Russians.  Trevor did a nice job pointing out how heavily Trump’s campaign emphasized national security and how this move could put the U.S. out of the loop on information that could keep us safe.  Ronny had a new tech bit checking in on the progress of flying cars.  I especially liked his rant about how you can’t just call any form of conveyance a “car” (a la “horses are not cars that shit in the sheet,” ha!)  The interview with Gabourey Sidibe was really fun.  She and Trevor puzzled over why her name is so much more African than his, she relived a few of her name mispronunciation horror stories, and she shared about her experiences with racism in the phone sex industry.

Wednesday, May 17 – Trevor bemoaned the rate of shocking Trump news, dropping a new bombshell before there’s time to wrap your head around the last one.  He looked at the special prosecutor appointed for the Russia investigation and then jumped to Comey’s memo about Trump trying to dissuade him from investigating Michael Flynn.  Awesome takedown of Fox News’s apologist coverage (my bit favorite was the guy splitting hairs over the meaning of “hope” and Trevor’s comment that he’s lucky he’s never encountered the mafia’s preferred brand of implied threat.)  There was also a short story on Putin’s trolling response re:  Trump sharing classified intelligence, accompanied by a great skit about two embedded Russian agents with wildly differing levels of difficulty in obtaining level.  The guest was Susan Burton, who shared about her work trying to help women turn their lives around after prison.

Thursday, May 18 – We opened with the ongoing corruption scandal on Brazil’s president, kicking off an Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That about other international stories (the king of the Netherlands secretly working as a commercial airline pilot, protestors at the Turkish embassy in D.C. during Erdoğan’s visit getting beaten by his own security.)  But of course, these stories had to make way for the situation in the administration.  The piece on Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel was great, especially Trevor’s imagined barber-shop conversation about past and present FBI directors.  I wasn’t a fan of Desi’s field report, a one-joke piece on an Arizona governor candidate who’s so dedicated to transparency that he has a tab on his website devoted to his sexual practices.  I did, however, enjoy Kerry Washington at the guest, particularly her comments about how Scandal’s writers struggle to stay ahead of real-world political insanity.