Sunday, August 16
· Recap of the Week – Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s VP pick, QAnon supporter wins congressional primary
o Watching Trump float a birtherism theorism about Kamala Harris, John remarked on how Trump never seems to get anything accomplished, “yet when it comes to amplifying conspiracy theories, suddenly he’s the fucking Flash on cocaine.”
o John’s explanation of QAnon featured this great line – “The main person working to root out the Satanic pedophiles is Donald Trump, which is a little weird, because” (insert photo of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein,) “you know.”
o John rightly tore into Marjorie Taylor Greene’s pro-Confederate statue argument with its, “If I were Black people…” argument. I loved his taking issue with the plural aspect of it (“not just one Black person, but all of them?”), and a great capper to that was, “Though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you were on a Halloween or two.”
· And Now This – Larry King shilling various products
· Main Story – Jury selection
o Obviously, this is yet another way that the criminal justice system goes out of its way to put Black and brown people at a disadvantage – the means were numerous and rage-inducing.
o Awful statistic – all-white juries are 16% more likely to convict Black defendants than white defendants, but having even one Black juror completely eliminates that disparity.
o Awful because, of course, prosecutors do their darnedest to keep all Black people out of the jury – it starts with the racially-biased rolls used to make jury pools, moves onto all the “neutral” algorithms that just so happen to “accidentally” neglect to draw potential jurors from largely-Black townships in that pool, and continues onto prosecutors going out of their way to strike potential Black jurors from the trial.
o Particularly heinous details – a DA shown on tape instructing prosecutors on how to avoid Black jurors (additionally noting, “you don’t want the educated ones,”) jurors being struck for such disqualifying offenses as “having a hyphenated last name” or “wearing a puffy coat,” and one case getting taken up to the Supreme Court because the prosecutor struck 41 out of 42 prospective Black jurors.
o It comes down to this – the 6th Amendment guarantees a jury of your peers, but “Who exactly is the ‘you’ there, the defendant or the prosecutor?”
· And Now This – Jim Cramer goes on about his weekly “boozy brunch” Zoom call with his kids
Monday, August 17
· Headlines – The Democratic National Convention begins, Trump supporter “boat parades,” USPS interference
o “Only 3 days left for John Delaney to maybe get that nomination!”
o Since the show taped before much of the convention events kicked off, that commentary will mainly come tomorrow, although Trevor noted how the virtual convention (due to COVID-19) will be different than any other – no crowds of delegates no standing ovations repeatedly interrupting the speeches, “and definitely no Bill Clinton kissing booth!”
o Joe Biden is up in the polls, but Trevor warned us to think about poll numbers like basketball scores – “They don’t mean shit until the last 2 minutes of the game.”
o Okay, so these were the actual words of a Trump surrogate in response to the fact that there’s no evidence of widespread fraud with mail-in voting – “There’s no evidence that there’s not either, and that’s the definition of fraud, Jake!” I think my head exploded.
· “Unconventional”News – the NFL’s first Black team president, record temperatures in Death Valley, the Trump administrations opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, the FDA approves a COVID-19 saliva test, new cases in New Zealand
o Good point that the Black president of the Washington Football Team is now in the unenviable position of having to navigate a pandemic within the only league that’s trying to resume play with live crowds and no bubble, with some who will undoubtedly blame him for anything that goes wrong.
o I loved Trevor’s riff on record-breaking temperatures being much more visceral in Fahrenheit versus Celsius, comparing reports of Death Valley’s temperature in the U.S. (130 degrees!!!!) versus Europe (54 degrees.)
o Fun crack re: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – “Untouched for 3 decades. For a second, I thought they were talking about Mike Pence.”
o Some good Trump burns in that bit too – I loved, “This might be the first time Trump has destroyed the property value of a place without putting his name on it first.”
o New Zealand is postponing their election for 4 weeks in response to new COVID cases, prompting Trevor to compare America’s attitude about elections with other countries’ – “America treats election laws like God told them directly through Thomas Jefferson.”
· Correspondent Piece (Michael) – The Cheyenne River Sioux battle with South Dakota’s governor over COVID-19 regulations
o I liked the line that Gov. Noem was “using her power as the state’s top Karen” to get the Sioux to take down the COVID-19 checkpoints they set up going into their land. Michael also called her “bootleg Sarah Palin.”
o Excellent closer – “If keeping your people safe is un-American, then maybe we should all try to be a little more un-American.”
· Interview – Rep. Jim Clyburn
o Clyburn did a nice job enumerating the ways Kamala Harris “complements” Biden, presenting them as an effective team.
o Trevor noted that many voters view Biden as a “pragmatic choice,” not a “passionate” one, and Clyburn talked about the importance of demonstrating why voters should vote for Biden rather than simply against Trump.
o I really appreciated his comment that “October ought to be Election Month,” emphasizing the necessity of everyone doing all they can to help as many people as possible vote as early as possible to counteract potential interference/sabotage.
Tuesday, August 18
· Main Story – DNC Night 1
o Funny comment about the virtual choir singing the National Anthem getting “trapped in a giant American flag” with each singer in the graphic of an individual star – “I’m assuming the only way to set them free is to elect Joe Biden as president.”
o Trevor likened John Kasich speaking at the DNC to humanity teaming up with Godzilla to fight the even worse enemy of Ghidorah.
o All the speakers emphasized the urgency of this moment, and Trevor agreed – “This shit we’ve been through? This was four years of Trump still caring about being reelected. Imagine what he’d be like totally unleashed!”
o I loved Trevor’s introduction of “walking vision board” Michelle Obama, along with his admiration for both Obamas being gifted orators while Trump “acts like he’s discovering the English language as he speaks.”
o Great impression of Trump’s self-own at criticizing Michelle Obama’s speech for not having the most recent COVID death count – “150,000 dead?! I’ve killed 20,000 since then, you idiot!”
· Correspondent Piece (Dulcé) – 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment
o I liked Dulcé’s description of people posing wearing their “I Voted” stickers – “They’re like thirst traps for democracy!”
o The crux of the piece was on the Black women who fought for women’s suffrage but were shut out – Dulcé talked about how these suffragists had to deal with racism and sexism at the same time, with one “sneaking up behind you like those raptors in Jurassic Park” while you focused on the other (great graphic of a racist raptor in a Klan hood!)
· Interview – Rapper/Actor/Creator Common
o Trevor noted that it seems Common is starting a new venture every time we turn around, but this time, it was a health & wellness series aimed specifically at the hood. It sounded pretty great.
o I laughed at Trevor getting defensive when Common asked him about his own fitness routine – “You can’t interview me while I’m interviewing you!”
o He and Trevor discussed the importance of maintaining physical/mental/emotional wellness in order to be ready for external fights in the world – “There’s no activism without self-activism.”
· Interview – Author Veronica Chambers
o Another guest promoting what sounds like a great project – a middle-grade book on women’s suffrage that portrays suffragists as the “badasses” and “tactical geniuses in politics” that they were, including the stories of WOC and queer women whose history is less remembered.
o A powerful statement from Chambers – “The movement took so long that only one woman who signed at Seneca Falls lived long enough to vote in 1920.”
o Chambers talked, not just about the intersectionality of the suffragists involved in the fight, but the many different issues that pertained to the question of women’s suffrage – “That’s the complicated thing about making a difference: knowing that nothing is happening in isolation.”
Wednesday, August 19
· Headlines – DNC Night 2
o Trevor cleared it up that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t going rogue by nominating Bernie Sanders “at Joe Biden’s party” – anyone who gets a certain number of delegates is nominated, “to remind them that they lost in front of the entire convention.”
o I laughed at Trevor side-eyeing the lackluster “victory” moment of Biden accepting the nomination – “I thought the Democrats had millions of dolers for this, why did it look like the grand opening of a Kia dealership?”
· Main Story – Conservatives question Kamala Harris’s Blackness
o This whole story was on fire. A Fox News guest argued that Harris doesn’t qualify as African American because her dad is from Jamaica and she has slaveowners in her ancestry – Trevor shot back, “First of all, being partially descending from a slaveowner is one of the Blackest things that can happen to you.”
o I loved, “You know how you know if you’re Black? If you’re dating a white person, and before you meet their parents for the first time, they start a sentence with, ‘So hey, listen, before we step inside…’, you’re Black.”
o Trevor hearkened back to when Obama was running and conservatives made the same sort of arguments about him, saying he didn’t have an “authentically Black experience” because he didn’t grow up in a poor neighborhood and wasn’t “down with the struggle” – “So these people agree that the American Black experience is about suffering, struggle, and oppression, but when Black people are protesting that oppression in the streets, suddenly, they’re like, ‘Why are you guys protesting? You people got your Marvel movie! Don’t you remember Wakanda forever? Uh, I don’t know why you guys are complaining!’”
o Great point – “Your Blackness as a person is never questioned in failure, but in success, it gets put under the microscope.”
· “Unconventional” News – Pool party in COVID-free Wuhan, far-right candidate wins Florida primary, Senate report details Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia during the 2016 campaign
o Wuhan, “home of the worst-reviewed farmers’ market on Yelp.”
o I liked, “I don’t care what everybody says, a pool is just a giant bathtub that’s also a toilet.”
o Apparently, the Senate committee that authored this report previously sent criminal references for Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. – “This is good news for Eric. When you’re the least favorite child, you get left out of all the family traditions, even the criminal ones.”
· Correspondent Piece (Jaboukie) – Young Biden delegates
o As Trevor noted, “You might have noticed that most of the [DNC] speakers are closer to Golden Girls than Gossip Girls,” so Jaboukie set out to meet some of the convention’s young blood.
o I laughed out loud at the “footage” of Hillary and Bernie facing off in 2016, which was just the Gandalf-Saruman fight from The Fellowship of the Ring.
o Good line – “What is so great about Biden, because he was alive during slavery and he did nothing to stop it!”
· Interview – Actress/Activist Eva Longoria
o Speaking as the host of the virtual convention, Longoria said, “Sometimes, I hate that one party has hijacked the word ‘patriot,’ because that belongs to everybody.”
o She also spoke to the importance of parties reaching about to Latinx voters, emphasizing, “Latino issues are American issues.”
o Because it’s not a Daily Show episode without a heinous pandemic statistic, Latinx folks make up 18% of the population but 35% of essential workers.
Thursday, August 20
· Main Story – DNC Night 3
o Trevor declared it “women’s night” at the DNC, with all manner of women speaking, including “women who don’t want to say they told you so, but they told you so” (a.k.a. Hillary Clinton.)
o We also got Obama’s speech, and Trevor wasn’t so sure about Obama declaring Trump incapable of the care and competency needed for the presidency – “The man’s only been in office for 3 years and 7 months. Give the dude some time to warm up!”
o Trevor noted that this wasn’t Obama’s usual hopefulness, with the speech feeling more like “a funeral for democracy” – I liked the line that 4 years of Trump took Obama from “yes, we can” to “let us pray.”
o Great point that Trump is so corrupt that Kamala Harris didn’t have to mention him by name, just say, “I know a predator when I see one,” and we knew exactly who she meant – Except Trump himself. Trevor’s impression of Trump “spotting predators” on his cognitive test was great (“…And the biggest predator of all, Robert Mueller.”)
· “Unconventional” News – Genetically-modified mosquitoes to reduce the population, Steve Bannon arrested for wall-building fraud scheme, baseball announcer caught making a homophobic slur on a hot mic, Netflix introduces “shuffle mode”
o I was with Trevor re: releasing genetically-modified mosquitoes – “In any other year, I would be excited by this news, but in 2020, why are you taking this chance???”
o I laughed at, “After the Aryan Brotherhood and the Latin Kings, I think America’s largest prison gang might be ex-Trump officials.”
o Fun bit of Trevor speculating what would happen with Trump supporters who now hate Bannon because he stole from them – it was a complicated scenario that delightfully ended with, “Then Trump steals the money and runs away to Mexico, which he can do easily because there’s no wall!”
o I liked the observation that Trevor can never decide what to watch on Netflix because all their shows are “both interesting and not interesting enough,” followed by comparing them to the 2020 Democratic candidates.
· Fake campaign video – Who is Joe Biden?
o The theme of the video, awesomely narrated by Steve Buscemi was that Biden is “acceptable under the circumstances.” Buscemi also called Biden “constitutionally sufficient” and highlighted qualifications like “presumably able to read.”
o I laughed so hard at, “So what? The guy wants more trains. It’s not like he wants to nuke hurricanes! He’s not out here trying to buy Greenland, for god’s sake!”
· Interview – Sen. Bernie Sanders
o Though Sanders mustered more enthusiasm than the Steve Buscemi video, he was also much more anti-Trump than he was pro-Biden – he noted the coalition across a wide swathe of the political spectrum who are rallying against Trump because “he is just not what America is supposed to be about.”
o That said, while Sanders’s top priority at the moment was getting Biden elected, he also swore to start holding Biden’s feet to the fire immediately after the inauguration.
o He and Trevor discussed Sanders’s “favorite topic,” billionaires, particularly the gross fact that many of America’s richest citizens have increased their wealth during the pandemic.
Friday, August 21
· Headlines – DNC night 4
o I loved the description of Michael Bloomberg as “Democratic sugar daddy and Bruce Wayne who never became Batman.”
o Trevor enjoyed the Zoom call of former Democratic candidates reminiscing about their experiences with Joe Biden – he hoped the RNC would do the same and talk about “the times [Trump] humiliated them or called their wives ugly and then they backed him anyway and then their souls died.”
o I laughed at Trevor (very relatably) admitting how tense he was during Biden’s speech, hoping he wouldn’t have any flubs – “It was like watching A Quiet Place!”
o Fun montage of all the people talking about getting surprise calls from Biden, which led to Trevor feeling “self-conscious” – “Why haven’t I had a phone call from Joe Biden? Am I a bad person? Does he hate me? Am I on airplane mode?”
· Fox News response to the DNC
o Trevor noted how incredible it was that Fox News complimented Biden on his speech, pointing out, “Fox never praises Democrats. If Obama had saved a bunch of kids from a burning building, their angle would’ve been, ‘Why are Democrats taking our children’s right to burn?”
o However, they insisted, loudly and repeatedly, that Kamala Harris’s speech was boring – “I know it wasn’t Training Day, but you guys are acting like you’ve never heard of Mike Pence! Do you remember what he said at his speech in 2016? No? Exactly!”
o Great line – “I understand why Fox News thought the speech was borning. They spend all day listening to a lunatic tell people to inject bleach, pose with Goya Beans, and call his porn-star mistress a Horseface.”
o Desi OD’d on Fox News footage to get their take on Harris, and as usual for these bits, she came away completely unhinged. I especially liked the searing accustions, “She has never once clapped when a plane lands!” and, “Why has she still not released Obama’s college transcripts?”
· Correspondent Piece (Dulcé) – “Drag Out the Vote”
o Dulcé spoke to several “drag ambassadors” from RuPaul’s Drag Race about pumping people up to vote.
o When one queen pointed out that one in five LGBTQ folks aren’t registered to vote, Dulcé exclaimed, “One in five?! That’s like Queer Eye without Antoni!”
o Dulcé’s plan to get people engaged? “They should make a law where you can’t line up to buy an iPhone until you show your ‘I Voted’ sticker.”
· Interview – Actress Tracee Ellis Ross
o Trevor complimented Ross on how well she’s handling quarantine – “There are some of us who look like there is a pandemic, and there are some of us who have chosen to exist despite the pandemic.”
o They discussed her critical acclaim/awards for Black-ish and the change from the days when Black sitcoms weren’t allowed to be “mainstream” – Ross wouldn’t let Trevor say she used to feel “snubbed” by the industry, but she shared a story about being told by The Tonight Show, “We love Tracee! Call us when she gets something!”, while she was four seasons into Girlfriends. Oof.
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