"They're Just Like The Tsar! If The Tsar Were An Elected Representative, Which Means, Not Very."

It's the Day's Day of Days!  Because Mad magazine.

I think I've figured it out.  Muir hasn't been out of Florida for so long that he figures out how the rest of the nation is doing by looking at Florida, and then presuming that everything else is like that, but worse in the blue states, with the various paranoid conspiracy theories floating around serving as a bit of spice.

It saves him having to actually learn things.