Comedian Samantha Bee rescheduled the latest episode of her TBS show Full Frontal so it wouldn’t go up against Monday night’s historic presidential debate. But, the move also gave her a chance to react to the debate while skewering the media for the sexist advice Hillary Clinton received before her face-off with Donald Trump.
On Wednesday night, Bee, the only woman to host a late-night show, ripped into the pundits’ advice that Clinton, the first woman to be a major-party nominee, needed to “be perfect, but not too perfect” at the debate. On the other hand, the talking heads said that Trump basically only needed to avoid a total meltdown.
Bee played a hilariously and frustrating montage of various media pundits weighing in on what Clinton needed to do to win the debate, with advice ranging from telling the former Secretary of State not to laugh or cough while also coming across as “warm” and not condescending.
“According to the media, there was no way for Hillary Clinton to win this thing,” Bee said.
In other words, Bee joked, even Clinton supporters in the media were basically telling the Democratic nominee: “Save us from fascism but, like, don’t be a bitch about it.”
In the end, though, Bee notes that Clinton outperformed Trump at the debate in the eyes of many of those same pundits, with one of her strongest moments coming when Clinton brought up disparaging comments Trump made in the past toward former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado regarding her weight.
Trump even doubled down on those comments after the debate, calling Machado’s weight gain “a real problem” on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, also this week there are new reports that employees at one of Trump’s golf clubs in California say the GOP nominee only wanted attractive women to work at the club and even suggested firing female employees he deemed “not pretty enough.”
On Full Frontal, Bee suggested that Trump’s disparaging comments about women will come back to bite him in the upcoming election. Bee told Trump: “Now you have a real problem—not only with her, but with any woman who’s ever been called fat. Which is all of us. We’ve been dealing with you our whole life.”