When President Donald Trump does something the majority of the country doesn’t like, Samantha Bee said their first thought is typically, “Why the hell did we choose this vindictive toddler?” But then she likes to remind herself that “we didn’t.”
With that, the Full Frontal host set off on a thorough takedown of the Electoral College, which handed Trump the presidency even though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by millions of votes. “It was the first time a college accepted Donald without his daddy’s connections,” she joked.
“Trump’s so-called election is just one of the many reasons the Electoral College sucks and should be abolished,” Bee declared to cheers from her audience.
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“Why did our country’s founders stick us with the Electoral College instead of something that actually makes sense?” she asked later. “I mean, partly it was because they were a bunch of elitist pricks who thought the average person was too dumb to elect a leader, which, OK, isn’t that far from the truth.”
More importantly, Bee pointed to the racist origins of the system, which helped “protect states that were at a population disadvantage because they had so many of those pesky three-fifths people—aka enslaved people.” Whether that was intentional or not, she said, “either way it enabled the worst thing our country ever did, which should be reason enough to consign it to the ash heap of history, along with low-rise jeans.”
Pointing to Trump and George W. Bush, who also lost the popular vote but won the White House, Bee asked, “Could you imagine what the world would look like if these two weren’t handed the keys to America? No, things wouldn’t be perfect, but we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, the world would probably be one degree cooler…”
“The Electoral College is so blatantly stupid, some people are suggesting a wacky alternative called democracy,” Bee said, citing a number of 2020 Democratic candidates who have called for the system to be abolished. Because it has benefited Republicans twice in the past two decades, they are less eager to get rid of it.
“But the Electoral College isn’t a simple partisan issue,” Bee said. “If the 38 votes in Texas go blue, Republicans will suddenly decide the Electoral College was born in Kenya.” Regardless of who it benefits, Bee called the system “unfair and undemocratic by design,” adding, “It’s time to ditch it.”
For more, listen to Samantha Bee on The Last Laugh podcast below:
