Between an unsurprising second season renewal and plans to hire correspondents and expand the show’s purview, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee continues to prove its worth on the late night comedy stage. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the comedian’s Last Week Tonight-esque segments dedicated to issues like the supposed “dangers” of Syrian refugees and the massive backlog of untested rape kits. Yet Bee’s in-studio bits are just as great, and she proved this without question during this week’s take on the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s announced plans to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
Everyone from the internet to The Daily Show has already applauded, lampooned and ridiculed the decision. Yet Full Frontal managed to turns the tables on the plan’s naysayers in a thought-provoking and deservedly chastising manner:
“Look, I know that change is difficult. I still haven’t gotten over Roseanne replacing the original Becky with ‘Becky with the good hair.’ When we make such a dramatic change to something no one ever looks at, we have to consider the fragile feelings of white men who tragically appear on only seven out of seven bills currently in production.”
Bee’s humorous criticism was especially responsive to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, who argued that “past president” Andrew Jackson — the current face of the $20 bill — had “done so much in the founding of our country.” As Bee pointed out, Jackson was the seventh President of the United States but not a founding father:
“Jackson wasn’t involved in the founding of our country, because the Revolutionary War happened before Old Hickory’s pubes came in. He was not a founding father. He was a genocidal pr*ck who forced the relocation of non-whites and fomented populous rebellion.”
“Genocidal prick”? “Relocation of non-whites”? Those would be references to the infamous Trail of Tears, a matter of historical record that many Americans and American history books would choose to forget. Following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which began with Jackson’s presidency, tens of thousands of Native Americans died during a forced migration from their ancestral lands to reservations.