It’s been nearly a week since America voted and Donald Trump is still the president-elect.
“So how was your weekend?” Samantha Bee asked her viewers. “I turned off the news and watched an amazing film about a woman president. Then I smuggled that film to the neutral zone to the Man in the High Castle but it didn’t work. We’re still in the wrong timeline!”
Back in the real world, President-elect Trump has hired noted alt-right white nationalist Steve Bannon as his “chief adviser” and, as CNN reported, raised “racial concerns” in the process. “Today Trump has fueled racial concerns?” an exasperated Bee asked. “Bannon joined Trump’s campaign last summer. How is CNN just now discovering that he’s the milkshake that brings all the deplorables to the yard?”
Then there is Trump’s first campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who just this week resigned from his gig at CNN to prepare for his inevitable White House position. “Why would he need to leave CNN for that?” she asked. “Will a cranked-up buzz cut accused of assaulting a reporter be the next press secretary?”
As names like Rudy Giuliani for attorney general and Newt Gingrich for secretary of State make the rounds, Bee said, “Some people say Trump is deliberately floating the most outrageous names so people will be slightly relieved when his actual picks are slightly less awful. How else could you explain this?” From there she presented the speculation that Sarah Palin could be named secretary of the interior or even head of the Department of Energy.
“Forget it, Sarah, you can’t hold down a job, unless it’s the job of distracting everybody from the more traditionally terrible names on the list,” Bee said, pointing to the climate change-denying non-scientist who is likely to run Trump’s EPA.
“Yes, this Cabinet list isn’t just a liberal’s nightmare,” Bee added. “A liberal’s nightmare is running out of almond milk at a brunch party. This is a nightmare for anyone who thinks job candidates should have experience and education beyond the qualification of being named Steve.”
But there was nothing more simultaneously laughable and terrifying for Bee than the prospect of Secretary of Education Ben Carson. “Good news, rocket scientists: America will no longer be using brain surgeon as a cliché for smart,” she said. “From now on, when we call someone a real brain surgeon it means semi-conscious political mouth-breather who’s only in the public eye because Republicans think liberals care only about identity politics and will be happy with any rapture-awaiting zombie who kind of looks like them.”
In the meantime, Bee urged Trump’s supporters to ignore the Goldman Sachs bankers in line for Treasury secretary and “enjoy the parade of misfits, deplorables, zealots and extremists who, come January, could be packing their bags for the White House.”