18 January 22
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Late-night hosts mock GOP figures quoting Martin Luther King out of context, and the Democrat holding up a voting rights bill
Stephen Colbert observed the federal holiday for Martin Luther King on Monday evening, “a day in which we all celebrate Dr King’s legacy by taking his words out of context to make it look like he agrees with whatever we’re saying”.
The US Senate marked King’s birthday, the Late Show host continued, by “doing what they do best: nothing”. Hopes for a voting rights protection bill were dashed on Monday by the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who opposed lifting the filibuster that would allow Democrats to pass the measure without Republican support. “What is the legislative filibuster other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators representing a broader cross-section of Americans?” she said on the Senate floor.
“No. No. Not representing a broader cross-section of Americans? The 50 senators who are currently filibustering the voting rights bill represent 41 million fewer Americans than the senators who support it,” Colbert protested. “Stop acting like the filibuster is anything other than an anti-democratic tool – which is also a pretty good description of Kyrsten Sinema.”
To illustrate the point more eloquently, Colbert summoned an actually full quote by King from 5 July 1963: “I think the tragedy is we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who would use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting. They won’t let the majority of senators vote, and certainly they wouldn’t want the majority of people to vote because they know they do not represent the majority of American people. In fact, they represent in their own states a very small minority.”
“The sad thing is Dr King could make the exact same statement today, and it would be just as relevant,” Colbert noted, “as long as he mentioned Wordle.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also mocked Republican figures for bending King’s words to their own ends, such as Florida senator Marco Rubio, who tweeted a conveniently partial quote: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”
“Did you read any further than that?” Meyers fumed, “or did you just pull up the text of the speech and do a control-F for ‘things that make it sound like he agrees with me’? Because dude, you gotta read just two more lines” to see that the rest of the quote condemns American racism and notes the country “has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned”.
“Man, it’s times like these where you just wish Rubio would go back to his old job as the picture that comes with the frame,” Meyers joked. “I know they’re liars and con artists, but Dr King was essentially saying ‘you made a promise, and you didn’t keep it,’ and Rubio just quoted the ‘you made a promise’ part.
“That would be like quoting Since U Been Gone, but not the chorus,” he added, mocking Rubio: “As Kelly Clarkson said, ‘and all you’d ever hear me say, is how I picture me with you. That’s all you’d ever hear me say’ – moving words about a love that lasted forever.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel checked in on the former president, who held a conspiracy-fueled rally over the weekend in Florence, Arizona. “Fatty LaBelle himself took the stage to scream about being cheated out of the election and to lash out at all the networks who refuse to go along with that,” Kimmel summarized.
More specifically, Trump called coverage of his big lie of election fraud “a lot of bullshit, that’s what it is”.
“Yeah, that’s what it is,” Kimmel laughed. “Somehow he went from bigly to big lie.”
Trump also offered a Covid conspiracy theory Kimmel called “outlandish even by Trump standards”: that Democrats are “denigrating white people” in Covid treatments to “determine who lives and who dies … it’s unbelievable to think this.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s super unbelievable to think this,” Kimmel retorted.
Trump also claimed that when it comes to Covid treatments, white people are “being sent to the back of the line.”
“Where does he even get this stuff?” Kimmel marveled. “This is a man who hasn’t waited in a line since like hot lunch in the fourth grade. White people are being sent to the back of the line? I guess Martin Luther King’s dream has been realized at last.”
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