Which Late-Night TV Host Is Better at Trump Takedowns?
The Monitor - A podcast by WIRED
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If the month before a presidential election is a time ripe for anything, it’s political satire. Memes, op-ed essays, riffs by standup comedians—all these things hit fever-pitch levels in the weeks before folks got to the polls in the US. But nowhere has it been more prevalent this year than on late-night television. But who is doing it best? Is it Samantha Bee and the team at Full Frontal? Is it The Late Show with Stephen Colbert? Or is it Lin-Manuel Miranda hosting Saturday Night Live? All of them have done segments riffing on the election—and, more specifically, taking Trump to task—but which has done it best? That’s the topic of this week’s Monitor—and while we won’t spoil the outcome here, we will say that the debate is heated. So check it out, won’t you? We’ve got writers and editors Peter Rubin, K.M. McFarland, and Angela Watercutter on the mic, and each of them is taking a different side in this matter. Then stick around after the late-night TV discussion for an excerpt from Watercutter’s interview with Issa Rae, the creator and star of HBO’s new series Insecure. A few helpful links for things we talk about in the podcast: -WIRED’s liveblog of the second presidential debate -The best tweets of the debate -Kenneth Bone and the other best memes from the debate -Angela Watercutter’s piece on the impact of last weekend’s Saturday Night Live -Charley Locke’s review of the Insecure pilot -The New York Times Magazine’s profile of Issa Rae