Last night’s fantastic episode of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee opened with a visit from Bee’s former colleague, Jon Stewart. That is, the shaggier, bearded, denim-clad post-Daily Show Stewart who runs a farm for abused animals with his wife, Tracy.
At less than a minute, Stewart’s appearance was brief, which left Bee plenty of time to eviscerate the 2016 election cycle — particularly the amount of attention the media devotes to Trump’s every utterance. In a segment called “The Bed We’ve Made,” Bee takes the media to task for giving Trump so much free advertising, and for failing to take his bid for the presidency seriously. She shows an ABC News clip from July 2015 in which Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison warned, “[Trump] has got some momentum, and we’d better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican party.” To which the news anchors laugh and laugh and laugh. “The only way that can happen,” Bee responds, through her own laughter, “is if people like you give him three billion in free advertising!”
Bee also sat down for a chat with the very game (maybe too game) Gary Johnson — he’s also running for president, didn’t you know? — and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is spearheading an effort to pass a bill called the Military Justice Improvement Act (#passMJIA), which aims to overhaul the military’s response, or lack thereof, to sexual assault cases. In January 2014, Obama gave the military one year to clean up its act, but has been silent on the matter since; as Bee points out, reluctantly, even Ted Cruz supports MJIA. “If we can get 60 senators to vote for Kirsten Gillibrand’s bill this week, I will personally caress Ted Cruz,” Bee vowed. You heard the woman, Congress!