Amber Ruffin schools the media with her new GOP coup game show, Nazis, Traitors, Or Fascists?

Amber Ruffin schools the media with her new GOP coup game show, Nazis, Traitors, Or Fascists?
Amber Ruffin Screenshot: The Amber Ruffin Show

Amber Ruffin is back for 2021! Just in time to be, as she confessed on Friday’s Amber Ruffin Show, filled with “rage,” “devastation,” and “embarrassment.” Oh, and relief that it was a gang of almost entirely white people at the center of a massive, horrific news story for a change, as she belted out in song titled, “At Least It Wasn’t Us!” Still, as much a beam of pure sunshine and laughter as Ruffin remains, this week’s attempted, Trump-ordered coup, wherein “a mob of Trump-supporting terrorists stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in an effort to overturn a fair and legal election and subvert democracy,” seems to have left her, like a lot of her late-night colleagues, pretty shaken.

Still, the ongoing, Republican-led, white supremacist assault on the very fabric of American governance doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun when Amber’s around. Mocking the news reporters and politicians who waffled by calling Trump’s MAGA-scarved lynch mob (and that’s not just hyperbole) “protesters” and “Trump supporters,” as the murderous (again, literally) seditionists ransacked, looted, and assaulted their way through the halls of government, Ruffin offered up a little learning game for everyone. Calling the game show Nazis, Traitors, Or Fascists?, Ruffin showed stills from the thankfully inept and camera-hogging terrorists’ copious reams of selfies, cell phone videos, and treason-in-action shots, and asked if what each person was engaged in marked them out as a straight-up Nazi (who loves Donald Trump), a traitor to America (who loves Donald Trump), or a fascist. Who loves them some Donald Trump.

The Capitol Police officer who was seen waving the mob through a security gate and the one seen taking happy selfies with them inside the building? Well, assist traitors and you’re a traitor, duh. The bearded asshole who broke out his Nazi sweatshirt for the big day? Well, that’s sort of a gimme. The creep toting a Confederate flag through the corridors of democracy? That’s a traitors’ flag, so no sweat there. Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Ted Cruz (R-TX), who “tried to stop the electoral count and overturn our democracy?” Whew, toughie. [Buzzer sound!] Trick question, as, according to Amber, they’re both fascists and traitors. Showing a picture of Donald Trump himself seemed to pose a similar dilemma, but, as Amber beamed in her best game show host voice, “And, of course, this bitch is all three!”

There was another game to follow, as Amber showed shots of seditious assholes doing things that would have gotten a non-white person 100 percent shot, followed by personal tales of being harassed by the cops for crimes as nefarious as skipping down the street, standing outside her own house, or being a Black woman. Who wears clothes. The grinning goofus happily toting the lectern of House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (ultimately identified as one Adam Christian Johnson of Parrish, Florida, and currently being tracked down by the FBI)? The West Virginia lawmaker (one Derrick Evans, facing federal charges) who filmed himself merrily storming one of the most supposedly secure government buildings in the country? The cultural appropriator (sort of a not-Jamiroquai mix of viking and Native American festooning the QAnon-spouting form of one Jake Angeli) seen standing in the House chamber like a fuckhead?

As Ruffin put it with obvious disdain, they and hundreds of other white supremacist terrorist types were allowed to defile the Capitol and, for the most part, just go home. (Here’s the FBI tip line to help identify any jackasses you spot on the internet.) Showing a clip of some other traitors, Nazis, and/or fascists chilling with their feet up in a nearby hotel lobby after the attack, Ruffin summed up her thoughts on the white privilege afforded these people who had just literally attempted to overthrow the American government. “You know what I thought when I saw that clip?,” asked Ruffin. “I wish I could walk around with the freedom these people enjoy, just one time.”

 
Join the discussion...