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Samantha Bee on GOP post-Trump: ‘Republicans eating each other alive’

Samantha Bee

Samantha Bee kicked off Wednesday’s episode of Full Frontal with “something that makes me smile: Republicans eating each other alive.”

Those Republicans would be Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House and the party’s highest-ranking woman, who is facing calls for her resignation by members of her own party for refusing to back down from calling Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election what they are. Likewise, the Utah senator Mitt Romney, one of only a handful of GOP senators to vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial after the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, faced overwhelming boos at last weekend’s Republican state convention in Utah.

One GOP figure not facing calls for resignation is Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is currently embroiled in a federal investigation for sex trafficking and an inappropriate relationship with a minor.

“Gaetz’s behavior is universally gross,” Bee said, citing his reputation for showing colleagues pictures of nude women on the House floor. “One Florida Democrat who got an inappropriate voicemail from Gaetz said he was one of the most extreme examples of bro culture. And that is coming from a woman who holds office in Florida.

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“Fortunately, Gaetz’s most recent allegations actually seem to be sticking,” she added, “largely thanks to former accomplice and current snitch Joel Greenberg,” a Florida county tax collector who has been indicted for sex trafficking, stalking, identity theft, wire fraud, bribery and using tax collector funds to buy himself cryptocurrency and Michael Jordan merchandise.

Gaetz and Greenberg have claimed that they had no further contact with the minor they allegedly had sex with until after her 18th birthday. “Aww, they waited to be legal predators!” Bee deadpanned. “Hey, assholes, even if you claim you ‘didn’t know’ you were raping a minor, you still ‘did.’

“Matt Gaetz should resign, not just because of the newest allegations but also because he’s used his wealth and privilege to create a career revolving around hurting and humiliating women,” Bee concluded. “In a fair world, Republicans would boo him the way they booed Mitt Romney.”

Seth Meyers

On Late Night, Seth Meyers also discussed the internecine conflict within the post-Trump Republican party. “The GOP is now so committed to the deranged lie that Trump actually won the election that if you simply state the obvious – that he lost, that there was no widespread fraud, and that he tried to foment an insurrection on January 6th to maintain his grip on power – the GOP will punish you,” he said, something Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney “recently discovered”.

“One of many shit things about the modern Republican party is that they’re making me defend people like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney,” Meyers continued. “You think I want to side with Liz Cheney? For one thing, she never met a war she didn’t support, and I’m afraid that if I’m too nice to her, her dad [former vice-president Dick Cheney] will invite me hunting and shoot me in the face.

“But this isn’t about Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney,” he added. “You don’t have to agree with them on anything else. It’s about why she’s being punished. She’s being punished simply for living in reality. That’s it.”

Trevor Noah

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah discussed the decision by the Facebook oversight board, somewhat of a supreme court for the social media behemoth, to uphold Trump’s social media ban for at least another six months. The former president, still banned from Twitter as well, launched his own website on Wednesday under the “Save America” slogan.

“Hold up, this dude’s been saying for months that he was going to create a whole new social media platform to rival Twitter and Facebook, and he just ended up making a blog?” Noah said. “And not just that – he called the blog ‘From the Desk of Donald Trump’? When we know for a fact that he doesn’t spend any time there. You might as well call it ‘From the Juice Bar of Donald Trump’.

“I get it – Trump had to do something to distract from the fact that he lost his appeal to get back on Facebook,” Noah added. “Or as he put it, ‘we won this appeal in a landslide, everyone knows it, so many victories!’

“I get why Facebook extended Trump’s suspension,” he concluded, “but you have to admit, it does seem pretty unfair to ban him from a website that began as a way to rate women’s looks.”

Jimmy Kimmel

And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also riffed on Facebook’s extended ban of the ex-president. “His punishment for trying to overthrow the government is the same punishment you give a teenager for coming home late after curfew – no social media for you,” he joked.

As for the new website, “Trump calls this a platform but it’s really just a website that he calls ‘a place to speak freely and safely’,” Kimmel explained. “There’s only one problem – the site doesn’t allow any replies, comments or even likes. The only person speaking freely or even at all is him.

“Finally, he can speak freely and safely with himself on his new website,” Kimmel concluded. “I’m not 100% sure, but I think he just started a blog, is all he did.”