Hundreds of drivers were stranded on an icy stretch of I-95 in Virginia earlier this week during a severe snowstorm. The situation became serious as many motorists faced dwindling food and water supplies and not enough gas to run their heaters as temperatures remained frigid. Some travelers had young children as passengers. Elderly folks were reporting that they didn’t have essential medications.
Emergency vehicles were mostly unable to reach the trapped vehicles, though some local businesses stepped up to offer shelter, food, and electricity for people to charge their phones. One trucker handed out loaves of bread. But while all this was going on, several late-night hosts used the situation as fodder for their stand-up routine.
“I saw that because of a huge winter storm, a 50-mile stretch of I-95 in Virginia was shut down, and drivers were stranded on the Interstate for more than 24 hours,” Jimmy Fallon said on “The Tonight Show.” He quipped, “Meanwhile, there was a dad sitting there like, ‘If I could just get over the one lane.’”
Fallon had a few other jokes on the traffic jam. “The only happy person was the cabdriver whose fare got up to $14 million,” Fallon said, according to The New York Times. He also addressed the lack of restroom facilities, saying, “Twenty-four hours in standstill traffic — I’m pretty sure there’s 50 miles of highway just covered in yellow snow.”
“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert added his jokes to the conversation too. “Right now, there’s probably no better place on the planet to quarantine than I-95 in Virginia, where cars have been trapped in a traffic jam for nearly 27 hours,” Colbert said. “Holy never-getting-to-Toledo!”
Meanwhile, “Late Late Show” host James Corden took aim at Virginia senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who had shared on social media that he was one of the people stuck on the highway.
“In fact, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine was one of the commuters trapped on the Interstate, causing him to tweet this: ‘I started my normal 2 hour drive to DC at 1pm yesterday. 19 hours later, I’m still not near the Capitol.’ But his commute wasn’t done. It took him 27 hours to get to work,” Corden said.
“Twenty-seven hours! The stakes were high too because it only takes 24 hours for anyone to forget who Tim Kaine is.”
Fallon also shared a one-liner about Kaine, who served as the vice presidential candidate alongside Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. “One minute you’re about to be vice president of the United States, the next you’re talking about your fluid intake,” Fallon said.
Not everyone was in a joking mood about the messy road situation, however. “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough ripped Democratic Virginia Governor Ralph Northam for his handling of the crisis, plus criticized him for blaming out-of-state drivers for the problem.
“The question is, what the hell was outgoing Virginia Governor Ralph Northam doing?” Scarborough asked on the show.
“I really don’t have any words for the stupidity in [Northam’s statement]. I-95 brings people. It’s the artery, the main artery that takes people from Florida all the way up to Maine. People travel I-95,” he continued.
“They’re not used to bumpkins being too stupid to prepare the roads before the snow starts. They’re not used to bumpkins being too stupid to plow the roads in a timely manner. But that’s exactly what happened with Ralph Northam. Then he blamed the drivers for just a hellish, hellish landscape out there.”
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Source: Dailywire
