“Saturday Night Live,” the unfunny late-night NBC show, in a pathetic bid to draw laughs at Donald Trump’s expense, made light of a serious threat that has arisen in the United States and Canada.
“De-banking.”
SNL writers apparently believe this is a phenomenon Donald Trump made up out of thin air.
“[Trump] hasn’t lost a step,” Colin Jost joshed in a contrived effort to draw false equivalence between the noticeably deteriorating Joe Biden and his political rival.
“Trump did have a slight stumble this week while talking about banks and he introduced an interesting new term called ‘de-bank’,” Jost went on, failing to acknowledge that this is an established term that has been in currency for years.
“We’re also going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to de-bank you,” Trump said in a clip. “They want to de-bank you and we are going to de-bank,” he added, as SNL, in misleading fashion, dropped context.
“I don’t know what ‘de-bank’ means,” Jost painfully tried to joke. “But he might need to take de-ambulance to see de-doctor.”
The full segment can be watched before, if you have the fortitude to watch this cringe-worthy mockery of “comedy.”
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There is nothing funny about this. SNL has crossed the line from being simply unfunny to showing a dangerous level of stupidity.
The CBC in February 2022 reported that the Canadian government had directed banks to “de-bank” hundreds of peaceful protesters against the government’s unethical vaccine mandates.
Using powers granted under the Emergencies Act, the federal government has directed banks and other financial institutions to stop doing business with people associated with the anti-vaccine mandate convoy occupying the nation’s capital.
In February 2022, the New York Times reported that Canadian bank regulators, in connection to the unconstitutional abuse of the Emergencies Act, unfroze the bank accounts of hundreds of protesters who had participated in the Freedom Convoy protests.
The NY Times reported the official details of the “de-authorization” of the “de-banking”:
[T]he national police force said in a statement, 219 “financial products” had been frozen, 253 Bitcoin addresses related to protesters and organizers had been given to virtual currency exchange operators, and a bank had frozen 3.8 million Canadian dollars held by a payment processor.
In the United Kingdom, there was the Nigel Farage de-banking scandal. British Muslims have also complained about being de-banked. Al-Jazeera reported on the British de-banking.
Recent research has found that banks in the United Kingdom are closing up to 1,000 accounts a day…
But after a headline-grabbing feud that erupted last month in the UK, many are now concerned about the conduct of major financial institutions amid fears they are closing accounts for questionable reasons.
Nigel Farage, the right-wing populist politician who championed Brexit, went to war in July with British banks – and ultimately won the battle – after his accounts were closed.
In the United States, there are multiple reports of “de-banking,” particularly over political and Christian viewpoints. In August 2022, a Christian charity that helps impoverished Ugandans was shut down by Bank of America. Newsweek published an opinion piece describing another case of a Christian charity group being de-banked:
Advocacy groups, government officials, and activist shareholders are using Environmental, Social, and Governance mandates to coerce banks to cut ties with politically disfavored industries like oil companies and firearms manufacturers. Now, it appears this cancellation threat is spreading to political and religious views that activists disfavor, too.
Both of our organizations have had recent run-ins with debanking. The National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF)—a nonprofit advocacy group that exists to defend the right of everyone in America to live out their faith freely—opened a JPMorgan Chase checking account last April. A few weeks later, the bank shut down the account without explanation.
SNL writers must think this is hilarious. But by making light of a grave injustice to people in society, SNL is transforming from an alleged “comedy” show run by partisan hacks to a mouthpiece for state propaganda.
It is thus quite the coincidence that on far-left extremist MSNBC, a sister network to SNL’s NBC, that a tendentious screed justifying the inhumane practice of de-banking was published a week prior to the segment.
Its target? Donald Trump, of course.
Activist writer Ja’han Jones, writing otherworldly drivel on the Reidout Blog, attempted to defend the practice of de-banking as a means of defunding (peaceful) “conservative extremists” while screeching that Trump’s rant about ‘debanking’ serves as a message to “far-right extremists.”
Trump appears to be referring to members of the far right who’ve been kicked off payment platforms in recent years — including Loomer, who has been banned from PayPal, Venmo and GoFundMe (something she wears like a badge of honor). And civil rights groups have continued scrutiny of the financial ecosystem used by far-right extremists, as evidenced by this report from the Anti-Defamation League.
So, of course, if this were a left-wing organization, then Jones would be writing from the opposite perspective that de-banking is a ‘grave threat to the far-left activist movement and it is a practice that must stop immediately!’
Basic human decency and fairness are apparently concepts that elude the partisan activists who run Comcast’s NBC and MSNBC.
But OCC bank regulators, incidentally, have codified a Fair Access to Bank Services, Capital, and Credit rule, with the intention of safeguarding consumers from de-banking based on any other criteria except for financial risk as determined by auditors.
The right for bank consumers to keep what one has earned and to access it for one’s wants and needs is a fundamental assumption undergirding the world economy. If that core assumption collapses, it puts the entire economy at dire risk.
One wonders if the SNL writers contemplated such implications of their “humor,” or if that disastrous outcome is something the left-wing raconteurs would relish.
It should also not be lost on anyone these members of the “radical left” are making arguments that benefit the banking establishment; just as this faction praises Woke corporations when they can be weaponized against their political opponents.
This is how “social justice” trumps actual justice with the radical left. The ends justify the means; no matter how inhumane, unjust, and oppressive.
We are talking about peaceful Americans who have a right to free speech. The far-left can complain about the far-right, or vice versa, but that should never affect basic human rights.
But the more the radical left’s opposition suffers, the more they laugh about it.
