No, Donald, You Don’t Get To Decide When It’s Finished

Last Friday, the media was once again played by GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they followed him to his not yet opened hotel in Washington DC for “major announcement” and an alleged news conference. What they got was a thirty minute infomercial with a 33 second aside acknowledging that President Obama was born in the United States, a fact most everyone else had known but which he has been lying about for over five years. He bracketed that fact with two other lies: Hillary Clinton started the myth in 2008 and he, Trump, “finished it.” After that, Trump rook no questions, then walked off with media camera crews following for a tour of the hotel. His security staff blocked reporters and editors from the entourage which, finally, got the ire of the networks. In a hasty conference call, the network heads ordered the pool tape of the tour erased.

That didn’t end it. On Monday, two talk show hosts, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers, along with “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee, let The Donald and the media know they don’t get to finish it.

Sam Bee asks the right question: “Why do so many Americans think playing footsie with fringe hate groups isn’t a disqualifier from polite society, much less the presidency?”

Her answer will not please some of Trump’s enablers, like NBC Universal, ripped for being “proud like your kid when he drags you into the bathroom to see his poop.”

“By ignoring that poop, NBC tacitly condoned a race-baiting demagogue,” she said, before going on to shred them for putting him on Saturday Night Live, “because ratings matter more than brown people.”

“When Holocaust survivors are telling you this guy gives me deja vu, maybe don’t invite him up into your house to play with your adorable children.”

On Monday night’s “Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s single sentence failure as a glaring precedent of what is possible with enough shameless pandering.

“That’s what’s called a firm grasp of the obvious,” he called Trump’s declaration that Obama was born in the U.S. “Next I assume he’s going to announce that water is wet, that bears poop in the woods, and that Donald Trump is not qualified to be president.”

Obama was “born in the United States, period,” Trump said. “No! Not period. Question mark. F*ck you, exclamation point!” Colbert exclaimed.

Late Night host Seth Meyers mocked Donald Trump on Monday night for acting like he could stifle criticism of his birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama.

“I’m not sure the guy who holds fake press conferences, has a fake university, fake foundation, fake hair, and a fake tan should be the one in charge of deciding what’s real,” Meyers said during his “Closer Look” segment.

Last week, Meyers said, the Republican presidential nominee tricked the media into attending an elaborate shilling session for his new hotel by advertising an “announcement” regarding the birther issue — which amounted to Trump saying, “Obama was born in the United States, period” and falsely taking credit for debunking the false narrative.

“‘Obama was born in the United States, period’? F*ck you, exclamation point!” said Meyers. “You don’t get to peddle racist rhetoric for five years and decide when it’s over. We decide when it’s over.”