CBS’s Stephen Colbert’s invitation to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to appear on Tuesday’s The Late Show preceded the fleeing of Texas Democrats to that state in the wake of the state legislature’s redistricting efforts, but the developments were impossible for Colbert to ignore. Even Colbert, however, recognized the irony of complaining about gerrymandering to the governor of Illinois, but after Colbert asked Pritzker to explain himself, he let him off the hook after Pritzker made a meaningless joke about kindergarteners.
Colbert wondered, “So what happens now? A lot of governors out there are saying, well, they’re going to increase the gerrymander of their states in order to counter what Texas has done. California has already said what they are going to do: they’re going to put a plan in place that will wipe out half a dozen Republican seats but it will only be triggered if Texas goes through with their plan. It’s kind of, you know, like a dead man switch or something like that. Can Illinois do something like that?”
Pritzker hedged but got the crowd to roar in approval by portraying Texas’s move as a threat to democracy itself, “It's possible, and I've said everything is on the table. I mean, look, we've got to fight fire with fire. They frankly tossed the rulebook out, and they're just acting in an unconstitutional fashion, and what we’re going to have to do is whatever it takes to preserve democracy.”
[See NewsBusters for more]
