There’s not much going on here in the United States — unless you count how basically everything is happening all at once. It’s overwhelming, but it’s also just another week in American in 2020. In any case, Seth Meyers had some thoughts about all of it, as he does, and he devoted a new “A Closer Look” on Monday to all the ways Republicans are trying to pretend they haven’t completely botched the pandemic response.
Meyers began the segment on Monday’s episode of “Late Night” by bringing up how Donald Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany complained about so-called “cancel culture” by mentioning that the kids’ show “Paw Patrol” was canceled because of the protests against unlawful police violence. Nevermind that it wasn’t canceled, of course.
“This is where the Trump administration and the Republican Party are at: whining about cartoons and Legos while sending secret police to gas moms and vets and arguing that slavery was a ‘necessary evil.’ A sitting United States senator said that. At least I think Tom Cotton is a senator. He looks like the Confederate slender man,” Meyers zinged, referring to comments Cotton made to an Arkansas news paper.
The quote in question, in case you haven’t seen it, went like this: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the founding fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
“Seriously, these guys just keep coming up with winners,” Meyers continued. “I mean, what’s next? Is Trump gonna say something nice about an alleged sex trafficker and predator who was arrested by the FBI at a remote– oh yeah, oh right.
“They really think Americans care about Paw Patrol and Legos, I guess they figure if you’re out of work and quarantining at home to avoid the deadly virus they failed to stop, you’ll need something to keep you entertained.”
Then Meyers slipped into an impression of McEnany.
“President Trump is working hard to make sure that out-of-work Americans who lost their health insurance and are facing eviction have cartoons and Legos to keep them occupied. And in lieu of the $600 unemployment benefit, we will be sending every American some Play-Doh and out-of-work Tamagotchi. Oh, I’m sorry. The Tamagotchi has died from the coronavirus.”
It’s a mess out there, and Meyers summed up the gridlock like so:
“The point is this is what your government was talking about as a federal moratorium on evictions and a $600 unemployment benefit keeping millions of Americans afloat both expired,” Meyers said. “And rather than rushing with extreme urgency to extend both programs or, heaven forbid, make them permanent, Republicans chose instead to dawdle as they bickered over ways to make the unemployment program both less generous and more complicated.”
You can check out the full “A Closer Look” segment from Monday’s episode of “Late Night With Seth Meyers” in the video embedded up at the top of this post.