Republicans are gaslighting you! That’s the big takeaway Seth Meyers had for viewers on Tuesday night, when he featured clips of the many ways conservative lawmakers and media outlets are trying to spin the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade seem like it’s no big deal.
While tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Supreme Court’s decision to strip women of the bodily autonomy the Constitution has given them for the past 50 years, Republicans have been cooking up all sorts of excuses to explain why disagreeing with the court’s decision is an extreme overreaction on the part of protestors. And despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and otherwise—had no desire to see the near-50-year-old ruling overturned. As Meyers explained:
Americans are understandably outraged that a rogue court just decided, on a whim, to shred abortion rights purely because it could. And went even further, essentially announcing through Thomas’ concurrence, that it would target contraception, marriage equality, and privacy next. And yet the shameless weirdos on the right, instead of confronting the reality for millions of Americans who’ve just lost a fundamental constitutional right—putting their health at risk and relegating them to second-class status—chose absurdly to accuse pro-abortion activists of staging riots.
Yet when those same people aren’t lying and accusing the left of doing the very things that the right has actually done (like, say, stage a violent coup because they disagreed with a decision), Meyers says they’re busy “gaslighting everyone into thinking nothing has actually been banned.”
The line many Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are trying to take is that the Supreme Court didn’t outlaw abortion—they just made the decision about whether or not abortion should be legal back to the states. Meyers played a clip of Sean Hannity and Marco Rubio going back and forth about how “nothing’s been banned,” which caused Meyers to kind of lose his sh*t.
Nothing’s been banned? Are you insane? This is the sh*ttiest Jedi mind trick I’ve ever seen. Of course, with a Jedi mind trick you usually need to be able to project calm, and Hannity isn’t capable of that… Thirteen states have trigger laws that either made abortion instantly illegal as soon as the decision was handed down, or will make it illegal very soon. And there are several more states that are likely to join, meaning all or most abortions could soon be illegal or severely restricted in at least 20 states, if not more.
This ruling was not theoretical. It put millions of women and people who could become pregnant in jeopardy immediately. These guys don’t issue hypothetical rulings. It’s a rogue court hellbent on remaking America as an authoritarian, right-wing theocracy.
And a court, Meyers helpfully reminded us, that counts two men “who have credibly been accused of sexual misconduct” among its members.
You can watch the full clip above.