Stephen Colbert tore Attorney General Jeff Sessions a new one last night for using the Bible to justify separating immigrant kids from their parents at the border, instructing his audience that “this is the conversation everybody should be having.”
As Colbert notes, the U.S. government has ripped at least 1,358 children from their parents at the border.
“Now if that sounds evil,” said Colbert. “then good news, your ears are working.”
“The United States? That’s you and me,” explained Colbert, “who are putting up with our government saying, ‘If you come to the United States, the worst thing imaginable will happen to you. We will take your children away from you, with no guarantee you’ll see them again.’”
Added Colbert: “That is using cruelty as a deterrent. That’s not my interpretation. That is our stated intention.”
And the way they’re doing it is horrific. Public defenders in the area are telling parents they’re taking their children away for baths to never return with them.
Clearly, no decent human being could defend that,” said Colbert. “So Jeff Sessions did.”
Colbert then played a clip of Sessions using the Bible to justify the policy.
Yelled Colbert: “Hey, don’t bring God into this. First of all, I don’t think God picked you, because I don’t worship Vladimir Putin. And, the only thing in the Bible close to this is a king threatening to cut a baby in two, and he was joking.”
Added Colbert: “I will give Sessions this: That is what Romans 13:1 says: You’ve got to have laws. But if he had just read a little bit further, into Romans 13:10, it says: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.’ But I’m not surprised Sessions didn’t read the whole thing. After all, Jesus said, ‘Suffer the children to come unto me,’ but I’m pretty sure all Sessions saw was the words ‘children’ and ‘suffer’ and said, ‘I’m on it!'”
The Trump administration is putting the kids in tent cities and an abandoned Walmart.
Added Colbert: “It wouldn’t matter if you took these children to really nice hotels—or Trump hotels—we’d still be the only country in the whole damn world doing it, because it’s just plain wrong. So for Father’s Day, call your elected representatives and demand they do something. Because I sincerely believe that it doesn’t matter who you voted for. If we let this happen in our name, we are a feckless… country.”
