Samantha Bee opened her first show since the pair of mass shootings this past weekend by talking about the panic that unfolded in Times Square on Tuesday when a motorcycle backfired. She proposed that carmakers should fix vehicles to make backfires sound like DJ Khaled instead of gunshots. “And if that’s not practical, here’s a better idea,” she said. “Get rid of the guns!”
With that, the Full Frontal host was off and running on an epic rant about the gun violence epidemic in America and all of the effort Republicans are making to pretend it doesn’t exist.
“We are so sick of living in fear for no goddamn good reason,” Bee said. “It’s very clear what the problem is, despite the usual attempts by the president and others to pin the blame elsewhere.” She pointed to President Trump’s teleprompter speech in which he declared that “mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.”
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“Right, the gun didn’t pull the trigger because that is physically impossible,” Bee replied. “Unless maybe it had one of its ribs removed. But the gun did put the bullets into people, mental illness did not. As far as we know, the El Paso shooter wasn’t mentally ill at all. Being a racist monster isn’t a mental illness. In fact, you can be one and be a ‘very stable genius.’”
She urged Trump and others to “stop trying to make this problem more complex than it is,” adding, “We know what causes mass shootings and you do too. It’s the guns, stupid.”
Instead of blaming guns, Trump and other Republicans have spent the week pointing their fingers at violent video games. But Bee wasn’t buying it. “Video games are not to blame for shooting or assaults or hate crimes,” she said. “They are not that influential. My college boyfriend played Mortal Kombat all the time and he never learned to finish me.”
Later, the host unloaded on the president for trying to link gun control legislation with stricter immigration laws, “a compromise that gives everyone a win, including the El Paso shooter, who called for tighter immigration laws in his manifesto.” She added, “This was one of the deadliest hate crimes against Hispanics in our country’s history. Using it to give our xenophobic president a win would be a slap in the face. It would be like if we passed reparations for slavery but only gave them to Mel Gibson.”
“Trump and the Republicans have laid out a clear solution to end gun violence,” Bee concluded. “First, cure the mental illness they invented, then get rid of video games, the internet, plus transgender people, same-sex marriage, drag queens, marijuana, kneeling athletes and Barack Obama—and while we’re at it all embrace Jesus Christ as our savior. It’s just that simple!”
“Well, how about this? Get rid of the guns,” she said. “If not, come November 2020, we’ll just get rid of you.”
For more, listen to Samantha Bee on The Last Laugh podcast below.
