Samantha Bee Eviscerates Trump, Sessions for Migrant Family Separation
On Wednesday’s Full Frontal, Samantha Bee recapped the whirlwind headlines related to migrant family separation – from the Trump administration’s contradictory defenses of their controversial policy to the massive outpouring of charitable donations made in response.
The comedian opened her two-part segment with a glimmer of hope. “I’m very impressed with how America has come together to fight Trump’s brutal separation policy,” she said, mentioning airlines that refused to transport children away from parents, religious leaders condemning the separations and even U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ own church issuing a formal complaint against him.
Sessions himself went on national television to defend the separation policy, attempting to swat away widespread Nazi comparisons.”This is a real exaggeration,” he told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “Of course, in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country.” Bee wasn’t buying that response: “OK, if you have to make a fine distinction between what you’re doing to children and what the Nazis did, you’ve already lost the argument,” she said. “Also, don’t say ‘the Jews’ like they’re delicious.”
Bee also blasted the Trump administration for defending those who support the separation policy.
“When it comes to tiki torch protestors, Trump is happy to say they’re ‘very fine people’ with just a few bad apples,” she said. “But when it comes to asylum seekers feeling countries with well-documented political and gang violence, he has to treat them all like drug-smuggling, human-trafficking MS-13 members who are here to round up our pure white daughters and give them forced Quinceañeras. And he’s doing it as a deterrent to anyone who might try to cross the border. It’s no secret that our administration has contempt for anyone darker than a Nilla Wafer. But to deliberately harm children to send a message to adults? It may not be MS-13, but that’s some pretty gangster shit.”
Bee also focused on President Trump signing an executive order to stop the family separation policy – a move she described with sarcastic enthusiasm. “Yay, no more baby internment camps, just regular internment camps,” she said. “Cool, that’s what we call a ‘win’ in 2018.
“‘Mommy and me’ jails are not a solution,” she added. “They’re not new, and they’re also not legal … Baby jails are the worst possible thing, but ‘mommy and me’ jails are a close second. Any solution to this problem has to start with the premise that children should not go to jail. I know, I know – I’m such a radical leftist.”
Bee rounded up all the Trump administration’s contradicting responses about the separation policy, which included Sessions citing the Bible and President Trump blaming Democrats. “Oh, it’s so clear now: Democrats made the law, which was in the Bible, which is fair because these children are tricking the government into separating them from their parents,” she said. “And also they’re simultaneously separated and not separated – ya know, just like Donald and Melania.”
The host cut to a clip from CBS This Morning in which co-host Gayle King quoted border patrol representatives who were “very uncomfortable” with characterizing the detention facilities as “cages.” “Wow, who knew conservatives were so uncomfortable with using the C-word,” Bee said in a winking reference to her recent Full Frontal controversy. “I should make a note of that.”
Bee noted that “Trump’s anti-immigration henchmen love to point out that they’re dealing with a serious crime and that we don’t let American criminals hang onto their children in jail.” But unlawful entry, she added, is only a federal misdemeanor, on the same list of infractions as “using the American flag for advertising purposes, neglecting to answer census questions, taking shellfish from New York harbor channels, detaining a seaman’s clothing … and, I swear to Jesus Christ this is real, misusing ‘Smokey Bear.'”
If we don’t enforce a “zero-tolerance” policy for writing Smokey Bear-themed erotic novels, Bee concluded, “we don’t need to have that kind of policy against people who come to America seeking a better life or protection from violence in their home country.”