Late-night TBS host Samantha Bee is definitely going a bit easier on President Biden than she did on Donald Trump, and she’s more than happy to admit it. In fact, she did just that when she appeared as a guest on SiriusXM’s “Dan Rather’s America” on Tuesday, where the two discussed exactly how she’s been covering the Biden administration.
Throughout the Trump administration, Bee made no secret of her distaste for the president’s policies, regularly targeting him on her show. At the same time, Bee also openly voiced her support of Joe Biden and now-Vice President Kamala Harris. Naturally, one might think that, since the candidate she supports is now in office, Bee might then not want to publicly disparage him.
So, Rather addressed the issue head on, asking her point blank “Do you, or do you not, find yourself sometimes at least tempted to kind of pull your punches?”
To that, Bee answered honestly, admitting that she definitely has pulled back at times. “I can’t deny that that has happened. I mean, I think that’s probably true across the board,” Bee said. “You’re like, OK, well we could be making jokes about, we could be making jokes about the infrastructure plan, but in general, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is great. Why would I purposefully undermine something that is, seems to be a great idea, pretty much across the board?’ Like, I don’t need to make jokes just to make jokes. I like to make really targeted jokes. There are more worthy targets right now, I think.”
That said, Bee did note that she wouldn’t be giving Biden a completely free pass. She reminded Rather and his listeners that her show just recently did a segment where they criticized the federal government’s handling of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and revealed that the show has plans to talk about what’s happening at the US-Mexico border.
“So, you know, they’re not going to be immune to our like comedically interrogating what they’re doing,” Bee said. “I think that we will not shy away from these discussions at all.”