This all started as a gag instigated by “comedian” Stephen Colbert, who last week suggested that a rapper named Cardi B deliver the Democratic Party’s official rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union, which is now scheduled for Feb. 5. The Late Night Show host even created a petition on Twitter, inviting supporters of his proposal to “sign it by retweeting.” As of this writing, the petition has 73,679 “signatures.”
A petition such as this is nothing, of course, without the consent of the prospective rebuttal giver, but no problem there. Cardi B telegraphed her reaction to the petition last Friday, tweeeting “why not … I get straight to the point Government shutdown over.”
????????????????????♀️????????♀️????????♀️????????♀️why not …I get straight to the point .Government shutdown over ???????????????? https://t.co/HwcNU5LEqy
— iamcardib (@iamcardib) January 25, 2019
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
I imagine that Colbert’s gag was meant as a slight to Donald Trump, as a way to suggest that the rapper is the president’s intellectual peer, but if so the joke is on him and the Democrats. The nation was treated to a glimpse of the Democratic caucus’s powers of verbal persuasion earlier this month when the handsome pair below delivered a “response” to an Oval Office address by Trump the content of which was unknown to either of them.
If the Democrats are going to choose one of their own to rebut the SOTU, they may as well give the rebuttal in advance since they won’t be listening to what Trump has to say.
Which is why I support letting Cardi B do it. She has demonstrated her interest in current affairs, having for example declared earlier this month:
I know that not a lot of y’all don’t care because y’all don’t work for the government or y’all probably don’t have a job, but this s*it is really f*ckin’ serious, bro. This s*it is crazy. Our country is in a [sic] hell hole right now all for a f*ckin’ wall.
And there you have it. A message that is not markedly different from what a Democratic politician might say — just way shorter.