News Satire Roundup: May 1st-May 4th

I noticed this last season during the campaign but appreciate that it has continued this year.  While I understand that what the president and their administration does is inevitably going to be news, and sorting out the facts from the BS on Trump is particularly important, I’m grateful that Last Week Tonight doesn’t spend most of its time every week talking about Trump.  The fact that it’s a weekly show versus a daily one probably helps it in this regard.  After all, The Daily Show spends a good chunk of each episode dealing with the administration – even if Last Week Tonight devoted every minute to the president, they couldn’t keep up with the average Week in Trump.  As such, I’m glad that they don’t even try.  He often gets the lion’s share of each week’s preliminary stories, but the show has maintained its normal format of a main story focused on an important issue that’s not necessarily tied to current events, giving us a nice reprieve.

Monday, May 1 – First up was the hacker holding Netflix episodes for ransom, with Trevor musing on “bad guys” with Twitter handles.  In looking at Trump’s first 100 days, Trevor wondered if the presidency has changed Trump.  Some news outlets/members of the administration say yes, but Trevor used footage from Trump’s Day 100 campaign rally – where he invoked the wall, draining the swamp, and other countries stealing our jobs – as proof that it hasn’t.  Next was a story on the failure of Fyre Festival.  Some good jokes here, especially the one about white people loving camping “except when it’s a surprise.”  Neil Brennan briefly got in on the story as well.  Meanwhile, the guests were podcasters Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor.  A couple of them were former speech writers for Obama and had some interesting things to say about Clinton’s words during the campaign and the coverage thereof.

Tuesday, May 2 – Pretty good story on Clinton’s first big interview since the election.  The show compiled an impressive montage of the shade she threw Trump’s way, and Trevor’s point about how much he missed politicians’ sentences having a beginning, middle, and end was great – serving as a perfect counterpoint to Trump’s insane Face the Nation interview.  Ronny showed up to talk about recent air travel fails, wondering whether flying has gotten more Lord of the Flies or if it just seems that way because people can capture it on film now (for my money, the best jokes were the ones about the scorpion in the overhead baggage compartment.)  I liked the interview with W. Kamau Bell discussing his new book.  His comment about being relieved to have two daughters – even though he knows how hard the world can be for Black women – because he dreads having to have “the talk” (about police) with a son was very affecting.

Wednesday, May 3 – After opening on what sort of lame “hacker” would access Melania Trump’s social media accounts just to like unfavorable tweets, Trevor turned to FBI Director Comey’s “mild nausea” over the thought of having possibly influenced the election – yeesh.  A story on the climate march and Trump’s penchant for rolling back environmental protections led into the first interview with Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope.  Discussing their new book on climate change, they had reassuring words that much of the country is doing its part to fight for a cleaner Earth even without the president’s involvement.  The final segment was another interview, this time with actress Sanaa Lathan about her show Shots Fired.  Once Trevor got his fanboy fawning out of the way, they talked seriously and with emotion about addressing police violence on the show as we continue to see it happening in our country.

Thursday, May 4 – Obviously, the starting point was the new healthcare bill passing in the House.  It was one of those “it’s so terrible that there’s nothing you can do but laugh right now” moments, never a good place to be, but Trevor kept the gallows humor coming.  Next up was a story on Congress’s response to recent awful things happening on planes, with a committee set up to address the heads of several airlines about their concerns.  It ended up, however, becoming more of a story about how quick Congress was to act on this issue, juxtaposed with so much inaction on police brutality; I was really struck by Trevor’s remarks here.  The guest, Professor Robert Sapolsky, was there to talk about his book on human behavior and the brain.  He had some good insights on the criminal justice system, and his discussion of non-political trends found in the behavior of progressives and conservatives was really interesting.