Satire Briefing Paper III

Jenna DePellegrini and Christina McAlister

The main topic of the week on all satirist talk shows: the Woodward Tapes. As we discussed last week, the Woodward Tapes are a smoking gun that could be the thing that pushes swing voters and undecided voters towards the Democratic Party platform. As informal opinion leaders, satirists are influential in shaping how these constituents will view and respond to these tapes personally, possibly affecting their election vote decision. It’s imperative that left-leaning satirists reach and attempt to persuade swing voters, undecided voters, with their shows, as while the majority of Americans have already made up their minds about who they’re voting for in November, there is still a small percentage of voters that could be persuaded to the Democratic ballot.

The best example of this tactic was seen on the Late Late Show with James Corden, who not only covered the Woodward Tapes but had much to say about Biden’s initial response. Following a video wherein President Trump fully acknowledged the danger and severe health risk the virus posed for the United States and stated that he was deliberately “playing the virus down” to prevent “mass panic,” Corden went on to state that it was Joe Biden’s address that really took the show. Fully acknowledging Biden’s history of gaffs at the podium, Corden went on to claim that “[Biden] didn’t mess up, he was forceful, and dare I say it-- Presidential.”

This claim of Biden being a true leader and Presidential figure only continued onto one other satirist show when Trevor Noah of the Daily Show went on to claim that Trump is not “a cheerleader” for this country, but is supposed to be “the coach”. Noah went on to say that at this point, “we pretty much know the pattern of every Trump scandal and how it’s going to play out”; however, never before has an action by Trump actively cost American people their lives, livelihoods, and sense of security, which gives Biden a huge opportunity to persuade swing voters over to his ballot. However, for the majority of satirists on both sides of the political spectrum, Trump was the main topic of the night, showing how great he is at driving the news agenda.

In analyzing the Woodward Tapes and their effect on this election, several questions came up: what were the President and the GOP’s response to these tapes and Woodward’s upcoming book? and Did Woodward do the right thing in withholding this information from the American public for all these months? To answer the first question, Seth Meyers covered Fox News’ initial response to tapes, showing how Fox News tried to focus only on Trump’s Pulitzer Prize nomination; Jimmy Fallon noted that Trump’s PR team misspelled nobel as “noble” for Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination in their haste to create alternative content for their viewers. Later, Trevor Noah went into more detail, claiming that Trump downplayed the virus because “he didn’t want to panic his stock market” and that Fox News “took the position that these Woodward tapes are nothing to be concerned about.” Noah revealed that Fox News reporter Tucker Carlson even went as far as to blame Senator Lindsay Graham for this incident, insisting that “[Lindsay Graham] has been pretending to be a Trump ally this whole time.”

To answer the second question of Did Woodward do the right thing in withholding this information from the American public for all these months? The Onion used satire to strategically craft an argument in defense of the ethics behind Woodward’s journalistic decision to release his interviews with President Trump when he did in its article “Defensive Bob Woodward Claims He Withheld Interview Since Journalism Hasn’t Worked On Trump So Far” They have Woodward explain that “In my defense, I only kept this damning interview with the president from the American people because it’s not going to make any difference whatsoever.” The article then goes on to jokingly say that Woodward “would have released this tape of Trump openly brushing off the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans back in February if we lived in a world where ironclad evidence of the president’s dishonesty would lead to repercussions-- but we don’t.” Stephen Colbert, who had Woodward as a guest on his most recent show declined to ask the reporter why he had waited so long to release these audiotapes, citing Woodward’s original defensive response listed above.

This article published by The Onion, although humorous, sheds light on an important fact of this upcoming election, which is Trump’s devoted and uncompromising voter base. America witnessed how strongly Trump swayed the white suburban vote in 2016 and we have seen this base only grow stronger since. The willingness of his supporters to turn a blind eye to not only the immoral things President Trump has done but the illegal and unpresidential actions he has taken throughout the past four years is quite astonishing. The Onion essentially makes the argument that Woodward’s tapes would not have changed how anyone views President Trump. For those who hated him, this gives them more motivation to vote him out and for those who adore the president, this is simply a matter of “fake news” and a distraction from all the great things he’s done for the country. This is backed up by Trevor Noah’s conclusion of how Trump supporters, in order to defend the President at all costs, will “eventually create the most ridiculous conspiracy theories to support the narrative that Trump is never in the wrong and has done nothing wrong in the first place.”

Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show also joked about Trump’s cult-like voter base. Similar to The Onion, Fallon commented on how Woodward’s actions could be defended due to Trump supporters being unwilling to see the bad sides of Trump. Fallon jokes about how his voters seem to need more than 18 tapes provided by Woodward in order to actually take COVID-19 seriously, because even after this scandal, Trump Republicans still refuse to address this pandemic as a real threat to our country and world. He then cracked a joke about how Trump rallies “look like a mosh pit at a Kenny G concert.” All jokes aside, Fallon points out a very vital aspect of Trump’s success-- his appeal to the white, uneducated population.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, he has been the punchline of almost every joke of nearly all political satirists. However, no matter how this makes him look, it does give him traction and national attention. This is something that Biden lacks. President Trump is a master at controlling the media and keeping headlines about him only. Even in satire, not one comedy show can end without at least 10 or so minutes dedicated to making jokes at Trump’s expense. If political satirists choose to mention Biden’s name, it only takes up a minute of their entire episode. As we discussed in class, most of these comedians are liberal-leaning due to their “celebrity” status, but for as much as they believe they’re helping Biden by making Trump look worse, they keep the attention on Trump which is exactly what he wants.