Monday, January 29 – Lots of fun bits
about the Grammys to start with, from Jay-Z being shushed by his daughter to
the “auditions” for the spoken word album for Fire and Fury. We then moved
on to Burns Strider, the former Clinton staffer who wasn’t dismissed after
allegations of sexual harassment. Trevor
didn’t give Clinton any slack for the disappointing way she handled the
situation and called her out even more for how she tried to spin it now. The show looked at Trump’s interview with
Piers Morgan, featuring his truly staggering nonsense about climate change, and
I loved the clip of Sean Hannity automatically course-correcting on the subject
of whether or not Trump tried to fire Robert Mueller; that was a serious “we’ve
always been at war with Eastasia” move.
Documentarian Alex Gibney was the guest, talking about his new series on
corporate shadiness.
Tuesday, January 30 – Live show tonight
to cover the State of the Union. Trevor
looked at some of the Democrat responses to the address (boycotting, wearing
black, etc.), Trump’s victory-lap claims, and the deep irony of him calling for
“unity” in Washington. There was a great
bit on how Trump treated his own delivery flubs, bending reality in
mid-sentence to make it match what he mistakenly said. Trevor highlighted Trump’s immigration plan
as the central focus of the speech, and I loved how he summed it up as the
Dreamers being told to “shut the door behind them.” Michael did a quick bit on being suckered in
by words that blatantly didn’t match the last year of Trump’s presidency. The guest was journalist David Remnick; he
and Trevor dissected the speech together and why Trump semi-successfully
reading from a teleprompter shouldn’t be taken as a signal of some great
turning point.
Wednesday, January 31 – Fun, quick bit
imagining a Superbowl in which players refuse to tackle each other in fear of
the flu. Then, it was back to the State of the Union. First was the
tongue-bathing reactions to the speech from Fox News. I especially loved Trevor pointing out that
Eric Trump’s account of “bruising his hands” from clapping so much is how you
know he’s definitely a rich person – the graphic of the young Trump boys with
their “clapping butler” was hilarious.
After a brief nod to Joe Kennedy’s response to the address, Roy gave his
own speech on the “State of Black Shit.”
I loved it – from cheering on Get
Out to commending the Black women who defeated Roy Moore in Alabama, it was
awesome. The guest, commentator Angela Rye, had some good things to say about being a pundit in the age of Trump and
the new habit of starting every political discussion with “this is not normal.”
Thursday, February 1 – Lord Bates resigning
from the House of Lords for showing up to session two minutes late was so
crazy. I also got a kick out of seeing
another round of Trevor’s Groundhog Day bit.
The big story of the night was the Nunes memo and what that might mean
for the Russia investigation; I appreciated the point that even Trump
appointees are telling him not to release it and that its veracity can’t be trusted. Roy kicked off Black History Month with a
piece on Black movie deaths, celebrating LL Cool J as the one Black actor who’s
avoided dying onscreen. I loved the joke
about one movie in which a shark ate Samuel L. Jackson instead of him because “game
recognizes game.” Rose McGowan was the
guest, talking, not specifically about the sexual assault she endured under
Harvey Weinstein, but about the ways he’s since tried to silence and discredit
her.
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