We’ve all been doing some soul-searching in the weeks since the election, and Samantha Bee — host of Full Frontal and self-described “ultra-liberal harpy” — is no exception. Up is down, left is right, Trump is the official president-elect, and Glenn Beck — former Fox News star and founder of right-wing digital network TheBlaze — has emerged as a voice of conservative reason. As Bee points out, Beck has been acting weird — not scribbling-nonsense-on-chalkboards weird, but “weird like reaching out to the lamestream media to apologize for his previous weirdness.”
It gets weirder: On last night’s episode of Full Frontal, Beck and Bee donned Christmas sweaters and sat down for a chat. “My audience is going to think that I am crazy for sitting down with you,” she opens. “My audience,” Beck replies, “hates your guts.” “My audience hates you more,” Bee shoots back. Beck won’t be outdone: “My audience would like to stab you relentlessly in the eye,” he says. “Ok,” Bee begins, “my audience wants to kill me for normalizing a lunatic like yourself.”
“So far,” Bee says in voiceover, “this is going great!”
During the interview, Bee points out that Beck has said so many crazy things over the years that even if he only spouted perfectly reasonable aphorisms for the rest of his life, he’d still warrant a good deal of “side eye” from the likes of her. Beck says he understands, but he presses her on why she’d have him on his show if not to mock him. Bee makes the case for a “broad coalition of non-partisan decency,” and what do you know — Beck agrees.
Beck even says that he doesn’t think Bee wants to do any damage — unlike his former self. “I helped divide,” he admits. “I’m willing to take that. My message to you is, please don’t make the mistakes that I made.”