News Satire Roundup: June 4th-June 8th

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.