Prime time’s lone female comedy host on loving America and ridiculing its president.
SAMANTHA BEE picked a great moment to crash TV’s comedy host fraternity. Just over a year ago—after 12 years as a correspondent on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and just as Donald Trump was mounting his hostile takeover of the Republican Party—the Canadian-born comic launched her own tbs prime-time show, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. Her sass and wit are a good match for a billionaire bully president who once bragged about grabbing women by the you-know-what. Bee pummels Trump like a piñata, sprinkling her brainy, lightning-speed satire with plugs for Planned Parenthood and protest marches. Her weekly show caught on quickly, nearly tripling its viewership in its first year— Full Frontal now beats Trevor Noah and Conan O’Brien in the ratings game. When I first met her, last summer outside the Republican convention, Bee enlisted me to help her snag an interview with Roger Stone, the veteran GOP dirty trickster and longtime Trump adviser.
SAMANTHA BEE: You were my Roger Stone concierge!
MOTHER JONES: That’s right. You wanted an interview in which he would bare that big Richard Nixon tattoo on his back. He said he’d do it if you showed up bare-chested. Whatever happened?
SB: He said he absolutely would be willing, but I’m trying to figure out the exact purpose of that meeting. I want it to accomplish something.
MJ: It’s been a year since Full Frontal launched. Any surprises?
SB: All of it. Showrunner Jo Miller and I kept the goal small and simple. It was hard to imagine that we’d get to do it past about six episodes. I just knew what our sensibility was. So in lieu of thinking, “Are people going to like it?” I tried to focus on, “Will we like it?”
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In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
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One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.
WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
Taking the Fifth For a glimpse of the Supreme Court after a second Trump term, look at the radical circuit court that's already driving America to the right.
Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
