News Satire Roundup: July 30th-August 3rd

Sunday, July 30 – Finally back, John didn’t have a chance to get into the news of the last month – he barely had time for the news of the last week, touching on Trump’s transgender ban, the failure of the healthcare bill (featuring some overwrought news commentary,) and Anthony Scaramucci (in which John stepped up where other news outlets could not to voice Scaramucci’s exact words re:  Steve Bannon.)  The main story looked at Alex Jones, specifically the products he hawks on his show “to keep the lights on.”  John examined the ludicrousness of the products themselves, their shoddy quality assurance, and the multiple Rolexes that belie Jones’s claims of just scraping by.  He focused on all this to contextualize Jones’s viral rants, drawing a line between, say, sharing conspiracies that chemicals in tap water may cause homosexuality, and selling a wildly overpriced water filter to help the show “make ends meet.”

Monday, July 31 – Anthony Scaramucci, we hardly knew ye.  Trevor memorialized the 10-day communications director and looked at other recent White House shakeups, including Reince Priebus’s ousting and Gen. John Kelly’s appointment as the new chief of staff.  Really good piece on Trump encouraging police brutality in a speech to officers.  The story touched on both the absurd – speculating that the “man” Trump met who claimed he could clean up Chicago in two days was actually Batman – and the serious.  Trevor looked at where the speech was taking place and the police violence history of that area, and he interrogated the go-to defense that Trump is merely “joking” when he says terrible things:  “If you don’t like it, it’s a joke!  If you do like it, it’s policy.”  The story fit well with guest Kathryn Bigelow’s interview.  She and Trevor discussed Detroit and her position as a white woman directing that story.

Tuesday, August 1 – Some good LA jokes about the 2028 Olympics, especially the crack about all of China’s athletes being “played by white actors.”  Next was a story on Congress passing sanctions on Russia – I liked Trevor’s comment about just how much Congress hates Russia (“Imagine Jar-Jar Binks starring in the third Godfather movie…”), as well as the observation that it’s basically sanctions on Trump as well.  He also covered North Korea’s latest missile launch and Trump’s less-than-reassuring “plan” to deal with it.  Ronny talked about several climate-change-related topics, looking at how global warming could affect coffee, air travel, and sperm counts (I laughed at his emphasis that it’s mainly men in Western countries affected by the last one.)  The guest, Al Gore, naturally kept up the topic of climate change.  I particularly liked his remarks about renewable energy technology coming to developing nations.

Wednesday, August 2 – Great opening piece on Trump’s proposed merit-based immigration system, with Trevor pointing out that Trump might want to be wary of anything based purely on merit.  That idea carried into the next piece as well, with the DOJ planning to investigate “discrimination” against white people through affirmative action.  Jordan and Roy came out to discuss it, with Jordan predictably railing against the injustices he’s suffered as a white man.  Hasan did a field report on the Appalachian Regional Commission, which helps revitalizes areas hit hard by the loss of coal jobs (and which Trump’s proposed budget, naturally, wants to get rid of.)  Congressman Joe Kennedy III was the guest.  He came across as kind of nervous to me, but he still had some excellent comments on Trump’s immigration proposal, as well as everything going down with the transgender military ban.

Thursday, August 3 – First was Mueller impaneling a grand jury for the Russia investigation, followed by the latest White House leak:  transcripts of Trump’s phone conversations with world leaders.  The transcript snippets Trevor read were ridiculous, and I loved his take on Trump’s weird “we’re in this together” vibe with Mexico’s president re:  the wall.  Good story on evidence-planting caught on police body cameras – Trevor’s analogy likening body cameras to a black light in a hotel room was spot on.  Great piece on the administration’s continuing push for “theme weeks,” including a montage wherein each was juxtaposed with footage of that week’s POTUS-related breaking news.  Author Kate Fagan was the guest, discussing her new book about a college track star who committed suicide.  I was especially interested in what she and Trevor said about social media as an added pressure to “appear” happy even if you’re not.