“We are one day away from knowing who the nominees are and six months away from the Sanders camp accepting the results,” announced Samantha Bee Monday night.
The host of TBS’s Full Frontal, which has fast become essential late-night viewing on a par with her former Daily Show colleague John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, ran a special segment on the eve of the final state primaries called, “2016 Primaries: What the F**k Happened?”
First came the Democrats. “We got here because black people are allowed to vote,” said Bee, before quickly moving on to the Republican side where 18 months ago they were sure of two things: “there was going to be another boring election, and Jeb Bush was going to be the nominee.”
Unfortunately for the GOP establishment, Jeb turned out to be a weak candidate—or “low energy,” to use the name given to him by Donald Trump, the only person who enjoys giving people nicknames more than that kid you hated in middle school or George W. Bush. And Hurricane Trump swept through the rest of the packed field, powered by a bizarre mélange of insults, boasts, and braggadocio—oh, and about three billion dollars in free advertising courtesy of the cable news networks who not only couldn’t get enough of The Donald, but treated him with kid gloves dainty and diminutive enough to fit around the ex-reality show host’s unusually small hands.
So, Bee ran a supercut of establishment Republicans shitting all over Trump in months past, including Louisiana Governor—and onetime presidential hopeful—Bobby Jindal (“The real reason I’m here today is he cannot be the nominee”), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (“We’re not going to allow a con artist to take over the party of Lincoln and Reagan”), and Texas Governor Rick Perry (“Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded”).
“That principled #NeverTrump stand lasted right until God’s Fluffer [Ted Cruz] quit the race,” joked Bee. “Damn, you guys rolled over faster than Melania Trump does after Donald dribbles out another unsatisfying midnight crotch tweet.” Indeed, when Cruz dropped out of the presidential race on May 3rd, Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and according to Bee, “One by one, elected Republicans turned up their collars and did the scuttle of shame into Trump’s limo—until finally, predictably, the last domino fell.”
That “last domino” was House Speaker Paul Ryan, the de facto face, voice, and abs of the Republican Party, who recently said he’d be endorsing Trump—despite the fact that he’d been very critical of him in the past, including branding the real estate heir’s Muslim travel ban “not conservatism” and “not what this party stands for.”
“He’s right! Trump isn’t what Republicans stand for,” said Bee, “he’s what they bend over for.”