News Satire Roundup: March 18th-March 22nd

Sunday, March 18 – John of course opened with Rex Tillerson’s firing and then moved on to Russia, covering both the former spy killed by a nerve agent (featuring a Russian news anchor talking like a Mafioso) and its election.  Excellent main story on Mike Pence, a stellar reminder that, if there was no Trump, President Pence would be his own kind of awful.  John looked at the VP’s slippery talent for not answering questions, the grossness of this purportedly-principled man hitching his wagon to Trump, and of course, his abysmal record on LGBTQ rights.  John, promising to say something good about Pence, applauded the VP’s pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, and that’s when it got awesome.  In response to the release of a children’s book written from the bunny’s perspective, the show has published its own, one that involves Marlon Bundo falling in love with a boy bunny and then outwitting the evil stinkbug who won’t let them get married.

Monday, March 19 – After touching on the Facebook data breach from the 2016 election, we looked, naturally, at Andrew McCabe’s firing.  Trevor focused a lot on how cold it was of Trump to fire McCabe the day before his retirement, and I loved the bit about how long and suspiciously Trump has been threatening McCabe’s job; the analogy with the woman who runs over her dickhead ex-husband was great.  We also got a story on the Russian election, featuring the various ways Putin rigged the game, from handpicking his opponents to running any real contenders out of the race to transparently stuffing ballot boxes (Trevor’s jokes about the polling officials obscuring the cameras with balloons were too funny!)  The guest, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, talked about his awakening to the reality of Confederate statues and his efforts to rebuild post-Katrina New Orleans as it ought to have been, not as it was.

Tuesday, March 20 – I enjoyed Trevor’s relish at Cynthia Nixon running for governor.  Great story on Trump’s plan to take on the opioid epidemic.  I loved Trevor poking holes in his “make a bunch of commercials to convince teens not to do drugs” idea that didn’t work in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the show’s anti-drug PSA saying that opioids would make teens act like Trump was awesome.  No surprise, we also looked at Trump’s death-penalty call for drug dealers, a notion Trevor similarly poked full of holes.  We caught up quickly with March Madness before moving onto another Third Month Mania update from Roy and Michael.  Drew Barrymore was the guest.  I’d been vaguely aware that she was on a Netflix show called Santa Clarita Diet, but I had no idea that it was a comedy about an undead suburbanite, and more importantly, that it’s from the mind of Victor Fresco (the man behind the amazing Better Off Ted!)  How did I not know this?

Wednesday, March 21 – First up was Ben Carson trying to blame HUD’s $31,000 dining set on his wife – I feel like cabinet members should be able to keep things like that from happening.  Next was Trump’s growing list of affairs (him forgetting to sign Stormy Daniels’s NDA is still my favorite.)  Big story on Cambridge Analytica getting personal data on millions of Facebook users during the 2016 election, with Trevor claiming he’d always known those “What’s Your Hogwarts House?” quizzes would come back to bite us.  Desi and Dulcé did another Women’s History Month piece, this time on Willie Mae Thornton, the woman who wrote “Hounddog” – I laughed at the remark that it was the “No Scrubs” of its day.  The guests were Matt Damon and Gary White, there to talk about their work with Water.org; I appreciated Trevor’s comments about the day his family got running water.

Thursday, March 22 – Déjà vu with Joe Biden and Trump trading schoolyard threats in a way unbefitting two guys in their 70s – I loved Trevor’s admission that Trump might have the edge, since decades of McDonald’s have yet to kill him.  More on Facebook getting mined for users’ data.  Ronny demonstrated his social media safety (only posting pictures he steals from white girls’ Instagrams,) and I liked Trevor’s response to Mark Zuckerberg not having expected to have to protect the integrity of U.S. democracy.  Lots of guests tonight.  Five Parkland students appeared prior to the March for Our Lives to talk about their quest to combat school shootings.  I liked what one girl said about the school grieving together and trying to help each other through it.  We also got an interview with RuPaul Charles about the new season of Drag Race.  In between poses and bits, he also rejected conventional masculinity and applauded all his girls as winners.