After a news cycle dominated by Sally Yates’ Senate testimony and the presidential Twitter meltdown that followed, Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment on Late Night with Seth Myers feels almost like a blast from the past. Meyers touched on this morning’s pre-Yates revelation that President Obama warned Trump not to hire Michael Flynn, but the late-show–ready footage of Yates shutting down Ted Cruz will have to wait till tomorrow. Mostly, Meyers makes more hay from the passage of the catastrophically awful American Health Care Act—but, to be fair, there’s a lot of hay left to be made.
For one thing, the weekend saw hilariously inept congresspeople trying to defend the AHCA to their furious constituents—most notably Raul Labrador, who claimed, “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” It may not be as satisfying to watch a woman tell her congressman, “You’re a fraud, you’re a phony, and your days are limited,” as it would be to have a functioning health care system, but at least it’s not unsatisfying. You can always make the case that exposing the GOP’s laughable hypocrisy and bad faith is a waste of time, since neither Republicans nor their supporters care about anything but winning. But it’s different when they’re trying to bullshit you personally. So when Paul Ryan’s office, stung by Meyers’ examination of his lies about the AHCA, sent a disingenuous email defending himself, there was nothing for the show to do but tear it apart, point by point, in the strongest section of the segment. Watch Ryan walk into this buzzsaw:
They took issue with our characterization of the bill as rushed, writing, “This bill has been online for a month, went through four House committees, and the only change this week was a simple three-page amendment.” Which is misleading for a number of reasons. For one thing, that three-page amendment is the reason a lot of Republicans changed their mind and voted for this bill, so you can’t claim it’s a small change. A lot can happen in three pages. That’s like saying, “I made you a cappuccino with hot water, sugar, espresso, and one other ingredient.” You would say, “Well, what’s the other ingredient, Mr. Cosby?”
Meyers also invited Ryan to appear on his show to discuss the issue personally. I think I speak for all Americans when I say we’d all really, really like to see that happen, even though it probably won’t make any difference. That’s how the next few years seem likely to go: on the one hand, people dying needlessly so rich people can get richer; on the other, great television.
