Last week, Britain learned what happens when you vote for something and it actually happens. Samantha Bee's "Full Frontal" began with clips of interviews of people saying that they wish that hadn't voted to leave and that they never thought it would happen. Now they are being forced with the harsh reality of an election.
"Look, your vote has consequences," Bee explained. "You want to send a message? Use the Royal Mail, it still works! For now."
Hopefully, however, America was looking at Great Britain and saying, "Oh God, what are we about to do?” Bee said, showing Trump at his golf course in Scotland. Clips of Trump telling the media that the European Union vote was great were only barely drown out by the bagpipes behind him. So much so that Bee couldn't decide which of the loud windbags was more painful to listen to.
“The Brexit vote was driven by angry, less educated, older white voters who feel screwed by globalization and the establishment and have been fed a chip butty of xenophobia slathered in slogan sauce,” Bee explained, showing a British voter who quoted Trump word for word. “Even a brain-damaged baboon couldn’t miss the parallels between the U.S. and Britain,” she concluded, showing Trump's statement on how he'd personally profit off of Brexit.
“Then there’s the sad conservative leader who gambled the nation’s future on his ability to control extremists in his own party and lost,” Bee said, as photos of David Cameron and Paul Ryan flashed back and forth.
Since Prime Minister David Cameron is unlikely to want to act out the UK's live version of "V for Vendetta," Bee pointed out the unnerving similarities between Trump and Brexit's right-wing supporter Boris Johnson. “Basically, he’s Trump with his hair on backward,” she mocked. Johnson, interestingly, called President Obama a Kenyan, so he really is just like Trump.
It's the racism coming out of the Brexit voters and their leaders that is most like Trump. Such racism went largely unopposed, with a "take our country back" narrative winning uneducated people over. Voters were easily persuaded by false promises of money and afraid that immigrants were coming to take their jobs and bringing in crime. It should be a familiar and cautionary tale to Americans.
Bee showed a clip of a woman claiming that she isn't a racist, she just has "problems with Negroes," explaining that she doesn't know why. However, she did deduce it could have been karma from a previous life.
“That is really the worst outcome of Brexit, not the breakup of the E.U, or the fact that you can now use the British pound as loo paper," Bee said. "It’s that the vote made these hateful morons think that over half the country agreed with them.”
Bee explained that the backlash Britain is seeing globally from the racist campaign that won is exactly why it isn't enough that Trump simply lose. “It has to be a fucking landslide.”
The U.S. is far more diverse and multi-racial than the U.K., however, so if Trump loses, it will be in large part because people of color made it to the polls. Bee encourages white folks to take their friend of color out to a "thanks for saving the country dinner."
Bee reminded the audience that we could still screw everything up if we forget to vote, flashing 2010 on the screen behind her. But there is hope. “Trump’s brand of right-wing, racist, anti-immigrant demagoguery isn’t American. It’s a European import. And if we’re smart, we’ll stop it at the border and send it back where it came from,” she closed.
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