Sunday, June 4 – John began with the
terror attack in London, although he spent less time on the attack itself and
more on the sensationalist news coverage of it in the U.S. He also addressed Putin’s first coy allusions
to Russian hackers getting involved in the U.S. election. As usual, though, most of the focus was on
the main story. It was another one
dealing with an immediate issue: Trump
pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
In addition to the usual suspects – the U.S. becoming one of the
(ludicrously-few) countries in the entire world not to be part of the
agreement, Trump’s chief motivation seeming to be his fear that other countries
are laughing at us – John took great pains to highlight just how ignorant
and/or willfully deceptive Trump is about the actual contents and requirements
of the agreement. I appreciated seeing
him pull apart Trump statements in which basically everything but the
prepositions was patently false.
Monday, June 5 – Trevor also started
the week with London, looking at Trump’s fearmongering tweets trying to exploit
people’s deaths for his political gain – awesome. More on the fallout from the Paris agreement,
focusing on responses from other nations and the number of states who’ve
individually committed to upholding the agreement. I laughed at Trevor throwing shade on
Fahrenheit vs. Celsius, and I liked his point that most of the states taking
action are coastal states, i.e., the first to be affected by rising seas. Good story on Megyn Kelly’s new show and her
interview with Putin; I loved Trevor’s impression of Putin as a mean girl, and
Michelle came on to take Kelly to task for acting like she’s not part of the
problem that’s been festering in sensationalized news media. The guest, William J. Barber, was
interesting. He had some excellent stuff
to say about voter suppression, and I liked his points about politics in the
Bible.
Tuesday, June 6 – I hadn’t heard all
the details on the NSA leak, so I hadn’t known about the “Reality Winner” thing
– Trevor’s right that it’s a gift to the administration, and I loved his crack
about white people no longer being allowed to make fun of Black names. Next was Trump trying to distract from “Comey
Week” with the excitement of “infrastructure week.” The piece segued into Trump’s tendency to
make a big production out of things he hasn’t actually done yet; I think Trevor
hit the nail on the head when he said Trump wants to be president but not do
president. Gina came on to talk briefly
about the attack in London before moving onto the UK elections, rubbing it in
our faces that the US can’t just have another one because it wants to. I loved the guest, writer John Avlon. His book about Washington stepping down (which
I kept calling “One Last Time” in my head) sounds both fascinating and
extremely relevant.
Wednesday, June 7 – More preamble to Comey’s testimony, with Trevor reading baffling excerpts from his opening
statement. A story on Jeff Sessions’s
recently-tense standing with Trump led to a larger story on White House officials being fired or having their jobs at risk – it culminated in the many open positions, most of which don’t
even have nominees yet (in part because people keep turning them down.) I loved Trevor’s comparison of being fired by
Trump to being kicked off the Titanic before departure. There was a good piece on the money skimmed
from Eric Trump’s charity for kids with cancer and the “fatherly influence”
that allowed it to line the pockets of Trump family businesses. Documentarians Sebastian Junger and Nick Quested
talked about their new film on the war in Syria; they had some thoughtful
things to say, and I really liked what they said about integration and
inclusivity helping to prevent radicalization.
Thursday, June 8 – The big story,
obviously, was “Comey Day.” Trevor kept
busy; there was a montage highlighting just how creeped out Comey was by Trump,
a great takedown of a senator trying to pretend language has no subtext, and an
examination of what both parties were hoping to get out of Comey’s testimony. I loved Trevor’s remark about imagining if
you’d been in a coma and just woke up to discover all this insanity was going
down. A tasteless Trump tweet after the
recent attack in London served as a jumping-off point for Jordan to talk about
gun control in the U.S., mostly promoting an upcoming special he has on the
subject (the clip from it, which included statistics that made the U.S. sound
like a war-torn developing nation, was obvious but effective.) Salma Hayek Pinault was the guest – she discussed
her new movie, Beatriz at Dinner, but
more importantly, she shared the dish on the time Trump asked her out.
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