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Samantha Bee Has Some Calming Words About Brexit

by Rosie Holden Vacanti Gilroy

Samantha Bee's political commentary is consistently thought-provoking, not to mention hilarious. And the host didn't disappoint with her response to Brexit on Monday night. Bee opened the latest episode of her TBS show Full Frontal with a monologue devoted to the referendum in Britain, focusing on the parallels that continue to be drawn between "Leave" voters in the UK and Trump supporters in the United States. However, Bee had a surprisingly hopeful message about Brexit: She essentially told Americans that the U.S. is not Britain.

The pro-Brexit Brits won the UK referendum, but this doesn't mean that Donald Trump will be the next POTUS. At a time when the outcome of the Brexit vote is causing fear that Trump will succeed in the November election, Bee's argument that Trump will not win because America is, well, not Britain is a greatly appreciated (and actually quite a substantiated) reassurance. She explained that as many similarities there are between "leave" voters and Trump supporters, there are fundamental differences between the United States and Great Britain that continue to go unmentioned — differences which will hopefully keep Trump from the presidency, but which allowed the pro-Brexit coalition to win in the UK.

Bee reminded viewers that "Being not Britain is pretty much central to the whole American brand." She went on to explain some of the most fundamental differences between the U.S. and the UK. One of the most important of these differences is race; while almost 87 percent of the UK is white, only 64 percent of Americans are white. Trump supporters are overwhelmingly white, and pro-Brexit voters were also mostly white, and this is a problem for the presumptive GOP nominee, because there are simply far more minority voters in the U.S. than there in the UK.

Bee went on to explain that the United State's large evangelical Christian population could also keep Trump from the presidency, since many Christian leaders do not condone Trump's xenophobia — this population does not exist in nearly such large numbers in the U.K.

However, none of this is to say that Bee spent the night reassuring voters that Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States. Rather, it was a call to action. The comedian wanted to make it clear to Americans that Trump's ideologies are un-American, and that it's important that the United States does not elect Trump and adopt the presumptive GOP nominee's beliefs.

Bee concluded her monologue by telling viewers:

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 ... it’s not enough for Trump to lose. It has to be a fucking landslide.

She couldn't be more right.