“And the news media would be doing everyone a fucking favor if you didn’t try and play up every empty gesture of independence from Republican lawmakers,” Stewart said after a montage of talking heads (stretching back through two entire terms of Trump presidencies) deploying “dam is breaking” and “cracks in the wall” metaphors. As Stewart put it, these occasional, feeble feints toward defiance are less moral courage than “the Republican Party’s current BDSM understanding of master and gimp.” (Complete with a ball-gagged mock-up of the GOP elephant mascot.)
To make his point further, Stewart zeroed in on the GOP lawmaker he called “the poster child for troubled acquiescence,” Maine Senator Susan Collins. As her constituents are all too aware, every outrage perpetrated by the Trump administration signals a statement of “concern” from the five-term Republican, immediately followed by an obedient “yes” vote (or a timid “no” once her party has secured enough votes to let her off the hook).
ICE kills a guy in Biddeford, Maine earlier this year? Collins votes for $70 million in ICE funding with no restrictions despite a watery protest at the time. The White House under director of the Office of Management and Budget (and Project 2025 mastermind) Russell Vought illegally withholds congressionally passed funds? Collins expresses concerns even though she voted for Vought after he specifically said he planned to do exactly that. Stewart also mocked Collins’ alleged pro-choice stance, noting that she’s “only voted for four” of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe.
As Stewart concluded over a slideshow of Collins scurrying away from reporters asking her about her latest hypocritical vote, Stewart puzzled over the old “Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown” meme. “I can’t figure out if Susan Collins is Lucy or Charlie Brown,” Stewart began. “She’s either Lucy, cynically pretending to be concerned about the obvious downstream effects of her votes despite repeatedly voting that way. Or she is criminally naive about the inevitable betrayal.” Either way, Maine voters have the opportunity to once again judge Collins’ degree of complicity in November.
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