'Southern-fried snoozefest': late-night hosts on Sessions testimony

Extract from The Guardian

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Late-night TV roundup

Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah addressed Jeff Sessions’ Senate testimony, the tragic Virginia shooting and the Russia inquiry

‘Compared to Comey day, Sessions-palooza was a southern-fried snoozefest’ ... Samantha Bee. Photograph: YouTube

Jake Nevins

Friday 16 June 2017 01.40 AEST Last modified on Friday 16 June 2017 02.31 AEST

Late-night hosts addressed a number of topics on a busy news day Wednesday, including Jeff Sessions’ Senate testimony on Tuesday, the attack on congressional Republicans in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Washington Post report that special counsel Robert Mueller has expanded the Russia probe to include an investigation into whether Donald Trump has obstructed justice.
“Compared to Comey day, Sessions-palooza was a southern-fried snoozefest,” Samantha Bee began, lambasting the attorney general’s refusal to answer many questions as “folksy bullshit and selective amnesia”.
Bee then responded to Sessions’ claim that he was not, in fact, stonewalling the committee. “That is actually true, he is not Stonewall. Stonewall Jackson happens to be the one Confederate icon Jefferson Beauregard isn’t named after. I guess his parents just ran out of space on the birth certificate.
“The folksy prevarication-off had just drawled us all into a coma when we were suddenly jolted awake by a fast-talking lady lawyer,” Bee said, referring to Kamala Harris’s questions for Sessions, which he said “made him nervous”.

“Oh, Senator Harris, look what you did!” Bee joked. “You have to understand that about a third of Jeff’s RAM is dedicated to not saying the N-word, which just slows the whole system down. And that goes up to two-thirds when a smart woman of color is lobbing questions at him like a tennis ball launcher.”

Stephen Colbert, too, discussed the Sessions testimony, taking aim at the unclear legal or legislative basis for the senator’s inability to answer many questions.

“You can’t just refuse to answer a question in case the president later decides he didn’t want you to answer it,” said Colbert, referring to executive privilege, which Trump did not invoke with regard to his private discussions with Sessions. “That’s like saying, ‘I invoke my constitutional right to the 28th amendment, which, of course, is not written yet, but it might be written one day.’
“Those answers didn’t satisfy California senator and mom from a cereal ad Kamala Harris,” Colbert continued. “Senator Harris wanted to know the concrete details about Sessions’ secret policy about secrets, and that did not sit well with other members on the committee.”



Harris, Colbert pointed out, was continually interrupted by her Senate colleagues. “Now, remember this hearing was about Russian interference in our election,” Colbert said. “And Kamala Harris had a lot of questions. Well, let me change that. She had a lot of the first half of questions.”
Colbert aired the clip of Harris questioning Sessions, who claimed he was being “rushed”.
“Yes,” Colbert said. “Jeff Sessions doesn’t respond to being rushed. In fact, it’s the only kind of rushin’ he won’t engage with.”
Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah began his show by addressing the horrific attack on Wednesday at a congressional Republican baseball practice, specifically the largely bipartisan responses by congressional leaders such as Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi.
“What was heartwarming to see today was members of Congress united as human beings,” Noah said. “Now, I won’t lie: watching all of those congresspeople speak like that really made me hopeful. And I’m glad they found what felt like the right way to respond. And if you want to know how not to respond, it’s like this.”

Noah then showed a Fox News clip of Newt Gingrich’s response to the attacks, in which he fanned the flames of partisanship and referenced an outbreak of “liberal violence”, an accusation one host told Gingrich was inappropriate in the wake of the attack.
“You can see in that moment he felt so betrayed,” Noah said. “He was like, ‘I didn’t come to Fox News to get held to any moral standards. I came to Fox News to be me.’”
Noah continued: “This day has been insane, because towards the end of it, we found out Bob Mueller is officially going to be investigating Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know where it’s going. I don’t even know how I feel about it right now. All I know is before we make a show about it, we will wait to see what Trump tweets at 3am and we’ll talk about it more tomorrow.”