I am Samantha Bee. Welcome to Full Frontal.
Thank you so much, oh my goodness.
Please.
Woo!
This week, the federal government
got drunk on dysfunction, passed out, and had
a 3-day lost weekend.
Oh man, you should see how many federal employees
I almost fucked.
And after the biggest political crisis in days,
politicians had one important question-:
whose fault was it?
Good morning, and welcome to the Trump shutdown.
We are now engaged in a Schumer shutdown.
This is the Trump shutdown.
My favorite is still the Schumer shutdown.
Why do women get blamed for everything?
This shutdown passed quickly, but it
only gets worse from here.
A much uglier fight over immigration
is gonna play out in the coming weeks.
Why has governing ground to a halt
over protections for Dreamers that 86% of Americans support?
Believe it or not, the answer isn't entirely Trump.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
POTUS, seen here asking Drew Barrymore
if she likes scary movies, hates him some immigrants,
but his specific policy proposals are as
empty as his Oval Office desk.
Those come from his senior policy
advisor, and political smallpox blanket, Stephen Miller.
You know, the guy who negged the Statue of Liberty?
The Statue of Liberty says, "Give me your tired,
your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
It doesn't say anything about speaking
English, or being able to be a computer programmer.
The poem that you're referring to was added later.
It's not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.
Oh, you should be nice to Lady Liberty.
She's the only woman who will ever let you inside her.
So, what's the problem with Stephen Miller,
besides the fact that his skull looks like it's
trying to escape his head?
I'm glad you asked.
DACA isn't just some bleeding-heart liberal idea.
A lot of conservatives want to help Dreamers, too.
In fact, Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin spearheaded
a bipartisan immigration compromise.
Trump had his Sharpie poised to sign up,
but when they got to the White House to talk about it,
there was a surprise meeting for them.
An aide to Dick Durbin said, "Senator Graham and Durbin
expected to have a meeting.
They showed up, and there's this," quote, "anti-immigrant
cast of characters there.
And that was obviously designed by Stephen Miller
to try to kill the deal."
As long as Stephen Miller is in charge
of negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere.
He's been an outlier for years.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm falling
behind my speed-walking group.
Wait up for me, Connie!
That's right, this isn't the Trump
shutdown or Schumer shutdown.
It's the Stephen Miller shutdown.
Miller is Trump's immigration guy.
And in the Trump White House, that is a powerful position.
It's like the same level of power
as the guy who was Bill Clinton's trim coordinator.
So who is this enterprising slime mold on the Wonder
Bread of democracy?
Where did he come from?
Is he just 10,000 spiders who really made a commitment?
Steven Miller was born in sunny California,
where I assume his first words were,
"It burns!"
As early as middle school, Miller reportedly
broke off a childhood friendship because the friend was Latino.
Wow.
Even I wouldn't have hung out with Stephen Miller in school,
and I was desperate for new members
of my Anne-Marie fan club.
By high school, Miller was a practiced
right-wing provocateur, appearing on conservative talk
radio and running for class president
on a platform of "screw janitors."
What happened to him?
Did a janitor once accidentally buff his forehead?
Miller also wrote a very chill op-ed for his high school
paper, called "A Time to Kill," which
scolded his fellow students for believing that Islam could be
peaceful, telling them, "Millions of radical muslims
would celebrate your death."
Reminds me of my 10th grade essay,
"Millions of radical Muslims would celebrate
me joining Bananarama."
I was so confident of what Muslims thought of me.
After high school, Miller fled liberal California
for Duke University, presumably because he thought
it was founded by David.
There he was, captain of Duke's competitive balding team,
and found his niche at the college newspaper, where he had
a regular column in which he railed against feminism,
multiculturalism, immigration, liberal professors, the war
on Christmas, and, once again, janitors.
He published a screed against giving the dorm
janitor a birthday card.
Okay, you know what, buddy?
I'm getting the feeling that you think
janitors are an ethnic group.
They didn't all float here in a dinghy from Janitoruguay.
Miller's right-wing media fame helped
propel him to the office door of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
As a Sessions staffer, Miller was
instrumental in helping to kill the 2014 immigration bill.
Then in January 2016, Trump hired Miller and made
him his opener at rallies, where he'd do a tight 17
minutes on how every Hispanic immigrant is going to steal
your job and kill your daughter, and every Muslim
is a terrorist.
We're gonna build that wall, so our kids
don't have to worry anymore about unsafe communities.
How many children are dead because
of our sanctuary cities?
How many moms are grieving because
of our sanctuary cities?
We've seen example after example, in the Somali refugee
program, of individuals becoming radicalized
and joining terrorist groups.
They say he's too tough on crime,
and he's too tough on illegal immigration,
and he's too tough on radical Islamist refugees.
Congrats to Stephen Miller for being
the first person in history ever to utter the phrase
radical Islamist refugees.
And congrats to me for being the first person in history
to die of douche chills.
After their act did so well on the road,
Trump brought Miller to the White House
as his senior policy advisor and Secretary of Foreheads,
where he's been intimately involved in crafting Trump's
scariest messages and creepiest positions--
from the attempted Muslim ban to the refusal
to reauthorize DACA.
Stephen Miller is a real American success story.
He worked hard, and stayed true to himself,
and achieved his dreams.
He is the exact same racist asshole
he's been since childhood, but now he
has the president's ear and the power to ruin
thousands of people's lives.
I really have a bone to pick with the guy who wrote
"never change" in his yearbook.
Schumer and McConnell better figure out
a way to separate him from Trump
before they're asked to pass the
Janitor Immigration Bill of 2018.
We'll be right back.