“Is it okay if, instead of making jokes, I just scream for seven minutes until we got to commercial?”
America’s late-night hosts had different reactions to this weekend’s mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 49 dead and 53 injured. An emotional Jimmy Fallon told viewers to support each other’s differences, and Stephen Colbert declared that “despair was a victory for hate.” Samantha Bee, however, had no time for such platitudes on this week’s episode of Full Frontal. She was just too furious.
“After a massacre, the standard operating procedure is you stand on stage and deliver some well-meaning words about how we will get through this together, how love wins, how love conquers hate. That is great, that is beautiful, but you know what? F— it,” Bee said. “I am too angry for that. Love does not win unless we start loving each other enough to start fixing our f—ing problems.”
READ: John Oliver Addresses the Orlando Massacre: ‘This Just Hurts’
Bee specifically took Florida politicians to task for refusing to acknowledge the importance of gun control to the issue. Marco Rubio declared on MSNBC that this could’ve happened anywhere in the world; Bee pointed out that actually, Australia hasn’t had a mass shooting since implementing strict gun control laws in 1996. Governor Rick Scott was asked at a press conference about policies that could prevent another massacre in the future; he responded by offering some soft remarks and then leaving the press conference.
“If only shooting victims could dodge bullets as deftly as you dodged that question,” Bee said. “Seriously, that guy bolted so fast I’m surprised every room in the Florida state house doesn’t have a Rick Scott-shaped hole in it.”
Many politicians, at times like these, like to offer thoughts and prayers to victims, but never take action to improve gun control laws. Bee responded with a line from James 2:17: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
“There is no shortage of troubled 20-somethings out there,” Bee said. “And whether they’re radicalized by ISIS, or homophobia, or white nationalism, or a dislike of movies, we are making it far too easy for their derangement to kill us.”
Watch the clip below.
This article was originally published on EW.com.
