See Samantha Bee Call Kris Kobach a ‘Racist Music Man’ in Spoof
Samantha Bee slammed Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, who also serves as vice chairman of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, on Full Frontal. With Hamilton actor Javier Munoz, Bee depicted Kobach as a racist con man selling bigoted legislation to small towns in a skit based on The Music Man.
Kobach spent years fighting to uphold laws that prohibited hiring illegal immigrants and made the official language English – that were later ruled unconstitutional. “Kobach tap-danced from town to town selling unsuspecting white people a law they didn’t need for a problem they didn’t have,” Bee explained. “[He] left their towns divided and broke … kind of like a racist Music Man.”
She then joined a cast of singers dressed in old-timey outfits to reenact Kobach’s history of racist scamming. Bee played Kobach. After convincing innocent townspeople to pass unconstitutional laws, she announced, “Bad news: I’m a real shitty lawyer … It’s alright for me, I’ve collected my staggering legal fee.”
Munoz plays a local immigrant: “The city welcomed me,” he sings sadly, “[but] now there’s such hostility.”
This is not the first time Kobach has been the subject of a Full Frontal episode. When Bee examined the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, she said: “Guys like [Kobach] have been playing the long game, methodically chipping away at the Voting Rights Act since LBJ signed it … And now this president has handed them the keys to the candy shop so they can run in and purge all the chocolates.”
The ACLU is currently challenging a voter registration law Kobach pushed through in Kansas, arguing that the state’s legislation violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Kobach is planning to run for governor of the state in 2018.