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Samantha Bee’s Segment On Sarah Huckabee Sanders Didn't Hold Back At All
In the debate over who deserves more credit from the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner — comedian Michelle Wolf or one of her main joke targets, Sarah Huckabee Sanders — one television host is unapologetically on Wolf's side. During her Wednesday show, Samantha Bee gave Sarah Huckabee Sanders several backhanded comments — like that she's a role model for young girls who are "smart, and hard-working, and completely evil."
After announcing Sanders was a "f*cking liar" and running a faux show ending, Bee kicked off her full segment on Sanders by saying "feminism doesn't mean you can never make jokes about another woman ever." She then gave Sanders her inaugural backhanded compliment — she's "very good at her job." Bee showed clips of Sanders directly contradicting the president's own words about the Justice Department being a "joke" and Trump's denial of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. "She is amazing," Bee enthuses, noting that "when a man had her job, he literally ran for the bushes." (Here's looking at you, Sean Spicer.)
The White House press secretary does deserve the "protections" of feminism, despite not being a feminist herself, according to Bee. The host proceeded to show a montage of TV clips highlighting some of Trump's less exemplary moments concerning women, interspersed with Sanders' respective Trump defenses.
First came Trump's support for Senate candidate for Alabama, Roy Moore, despite allegations he'd had inappropriate sexual contact with girls as young as 14 years old. Bee shows Sanders responding with, "He's not going to obviously support a Democrat."
Next up were reports of Trump defending Rob Porter, who was accused of domestic violence. Porter denies the allegations, and Trump tweeted at the time, "Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"
"The president simply said that there should be due process," Sanders says in the ensuing clip. Then she's seen in an interview with Jake Tapper being asked about the allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted multiple women — allegations Trump has consistently denied. "Has Hillary Clinton apologized for the four American lives that were lost in Benghazi?" was her response to Tapper's question of whether or not Trump should apologize for his behavior.
"All press secretaries lie," Bee concedes. "But Sarah Huckabee Sanders' lies are more like a Jedi mind trick." Bee went on, "She's smart, she's savvy, and she has an eerie ability to make towering falsehoods unwatchably dull." Comparing Sanders to a dementor from Harry Potter, Bee told the press they should disregard however many pies Sanders bakes them (which is, apparently, a thing). The Full Frontal host also made reference to an infamously barf-inducing scene involving pie from the movie The Help.
Bee quoted Sanders' husband as saying, "Sarah is never going to do anything that violates her conscience." And Bee observes that's "weird, because the main thing she does is defend the worst f*cking stuff imaginable." Then follows another montage of Trump bad behavior — telling rally goers to "knock the crap out of" a protester, retweeting far-right Anti-Muslim videos, suggesting Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would "do anything" for campaign contributions — punctuated by Sanders' various offerings of word cover for the president.
"I salute you, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You have outlasted every man who's had your job and almost any other job in the Trump White House," Bee says toward the end of her Sanders segment. "You are a hell of a role model for little girls everywhere who are smart, hard-working, and completely evil."