Jordan Klepper provides The Opposition to Trump's plan to sabotage Obamacare
Comedy Central’s new fake news show (“fake” as in “satirically exposing the hypocrisy of people who scream ‘fake news’”), The Opposition With Jordan Klepper is still ironing out its Colbert Report 2.0 model. Irony is a comedic bucking bronco, but Klepper has just the “alt-right” punchable demeanor for the job of portraying a smugly clueless conspiracy d-bag whose windy bluster serves to undermine the metaphorical bananas he’s selling. On Thursday’s show (only The Opposition’s fourth episode overall), Klepper played his role well, praising Donald Trump’s not-remotely-subtle attempts to undermine the Affordable Care Act with the bear-trap conviction of the hardcore conservative and very, very wrong.
Admiringly touting Trump’s strategy for destroying a program that helps millions of people as a “Sneaky Repeal” (as opposed to the “skinny repeals” that were part of the Republicans’ woefully unsuccessful and mendacious attempts to kill the ACA through actual governance), Klepper played the Paul Ryan-esque “pull yourself up by the bootstraps you can’t afford any more” role perfectly. When one actual expert termed Trump’s backdoor shenanigans on healthcare as like “stepping on the oxygen hose” of a patient and then asking why they can’t breathe, Klepper countered in Ayn Rand-ian, beady-eyed privilege-speak that Trump stomping on the hose is just “empowering that patient to breathe on his own terms.”
And how, to Klepper’s performative glee, is Trump cutting off Obamacare’s air? Some methods, like causing uncertainty in the insurance market by threatening to withhold ACA payments, are pure high-handed rich guy assholery. Others, like slashing the enrollment period in half, cutting guides who help enrollees by 40 per cent, and cutting funding for ACA outreach by 90 percent are straight-up, hands-on evil. And shuttering the Healthcare.gov website for 12 hours every Sunday? That’s just some petty, bush-league bullshit, all cheered on by Klepper’s faux jerk, who responds to complaints that Trump trying to end-run murder an enormously popular and necessary program he didn’t have the smarts or political savvy to defeat like an actual politician by lecturing that, if everyone has healthcare, “then it’s not special.”
Luckily for people who’d like to thwart this sneaky, cowardly nonsense (and those who’d like to keep on living), Klepper’s smarmy right-winger has some loose, colorless lips. Not only did he play a montage of Trump’s many, many public statements about his intention to try exactly the sort of callous, cruel, underhanded garbage he’s currently pulling, Klepper also broadcast a graphic chock full of all the necessary dates, phone numbers, and websites Americans can use to enroll in the ACA before the December 15 deadline. In keeping with Klepper’s vehement wishes that viewers of The Opposition not, under any circumstances, disseminate this useful, potentially life-saving information far and wide via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or any other popular social network, we here at the A.V. Club can only respectfully ask that you do not screenshot this picture and send it to literally everyone you know.