News Satire Roundup: February 19th-February 23rd

Sunday, February 19 – In what I imagine will be a regular feature, the first part of the show was a Trump recap, covering the rally and #LastNightInSweden, the unhinged press conference , and a nod for the stories that aren’t getting covered in depth (such as the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s half-brother) because of Trump’s constant onslaught of disasters.  Vladimir Putin was the subject of the main story, looking at the idea of what Trump’s repeatedly-expressed wish for the U.S. to “get along better” with Russia might actually entail.  It was interesting to see footage of how seriously some Russian citizens take the ridiculous Putin photo ops, the list of “coincidentally” deceased/discredited/jailed opponents was chilling, and I loved John’s horror at what sort of “monster” works out in a $3000 track suit.  I enjoyed the show’s parody of the Putin-themed pop number at the end, but it wasn’t half as crazy as the real thing.

Monday, February 20 – The Daily Show is doing clip shows this week, each night covering a different post-election subject.  Tonight was the end of the Obama era, bidding farewell to the 44^th president (and sanity in the White House.)  For the most part, it was fairly lengthy clips, showing several large chunks of a handful of stories (McConnell’s mission to destroy Obamacare, baby-proofing the White House before the arrival of President Trump, silly commentator amazement over vacation Obama’s backwards baseball hat, OMG!, etc.)  I like that approach better than just flitting from punchline to punchline.  The episode also included clips from different interviews that touched on Obama and his legacy – though I was surprised there wasn’t anything from Trevor’s interview with Obama himself – and they reaired the entire Key & Peele bit with Obama and Luthor one last time (see what I did there?)

Tuesday, February 21 – The theme here was “The Celebrity Appresident,” seemingly a Trump catch-all.  His time as president-elect is mostly what’s covered here, along with a little “bonus” Kellyanne Conway (I enjoyed the repeats of Trevor’s breakdown of the “alternative facts” moment and Michelle’s piece on Conway’s bag of tricks.)  I suppose because Trump is a nonstop source of satire-worthy material, this episode pulled from a lot more stories and it was more of a canter through punchlines, with a few longer clips here and there.  No surprise, there were tweets galore, ludicrous press conferences (sigh – remember the days when loading up a table with blank manila folders was a trainwreck of a Trump press conference? that’d be tame now,) hints of Russian shadiness, attacks on the media, and a heap of general unpleasantness.  It’s exhausting to get all of it smashed into one half-hour.

Wednesday, February 22 – Here we got Trump’s inauguration (plus the buildup/aftermath.)  More like Monday’s show, with more time spent on fewer stories, which is definitely the way to go.  Trevor’s impression of Trump telling the “story” of his inauguration like he’s reading a fairy tale to a bunch of CIA agents kills me, and Lewis’s glee at the many celebrities who turned down their invites is still great.  It was encouraging to see the footage of the Women’s March again, and they showed quite a bit of Jordan and Desi’s tag-team report covering both the inauguration and the march.  I have to say, though, while they got in some good crowd-size jokes, I was really surprised they didn’t include anything from Trevor’s riff equating Trump’s crowd size with his manhood; they may have been dick jokes, but I thought they were all excellently-made dick jokes, and I was expecting to see them again.

Thursday, February 23 – Basically, President Trump so far.  Even though the episode mostly took the “fewer stories, longer clips” approach, it still seemed exhausting to watch; Trevor was spot-on when he said that every day with Trump as president seems more like a year.  A few blasts from the past, including Sally Yates and Michael Flynn actually being National Security Advisor, and the show revisited Steve Bannon as the shadowy overlord behind the scenes.  Seeing it a second time, I’m still impressed with the show’s coverage of the travel ban.  Trevor laying out the illogic of the seven countries was excellent (particularly in light of how the administration has been calling out 9/11 and San Bernardino as examples,) and I loved Hasan taking all the Republicans who’d assured him that “a Muslim ban is something that could never really happen” to task.  One month down – 47 more to go!