Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert laughed at reports that Fox News has instituted a “soft ban” of Donald Trump. “That’s like Discovery Channel banning sharks,” he said. “No one wants to watch Salty Water Week.”
The ban comes as Trump has reportedly fallen out of favor with the News Corp chairman, Rupert Murdoch. “He wants to make the former president persona non grata, as opposed to now, when he’s persona au gratin,” Colbert joked.
Instead, Fox News is trying to promote other candidates, particularly the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. But “things are not going according to Uncle Rupie’s plan”, Colbert noted. Earlier this week, Fox sent Brian Kilmeade – “the most information-resistant member of the Fox & Friends”, according to Colbert – to a diner in Florida to show how popular DeSantis is. Kilmeade desperately searched the room for a DeSantis voter, and found only one.
Colbert also touched on a new Republican fixation with banning drag performance. The “latest hateful dummy to jump on the turd wagon” is Texas representative Nate Schatzline, who has authored a bill that would limit drag by designating any establishment a “sexually oriented business” if it allows “on-premises consumption of alcoholic beverages” and performances by anyone wearing clothing or makeup not stereotypical of their born sex.
“If serving alcohol and having men in gowns makes you a sexually oriented business, I have bad news about church,” Colbert noted.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel attempted to define the Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC, which kicked off this week in Maryland. “It’s kinda hard to explain,” the host said of the far-right Republican gathering. “Every like low-rent radio host and podcast racist with a dye job and a fleece vest shows up to try to out-crazy each other.
“Remember the first seasons of American Idol? When the losers would just line up and get mowed down by Simon Cowell? It’s like that, but without Simon Cowell,” he added.
One notable absentee from this year’s CPAC is Mike Pence. “Not only is the former vice-poodle skipping CPAC this year, he appears to be distancing himself further from his former boss,” Kimmel noted. Asked by CBS News if he would support Trump as the Republican nominee for 2024, Pence deferred: “Well, I think we’ll have better choices, and I really trust Republican voters.”
“So, no,” Kimmel translated. “Has anyone dodged more questions than Mike Pence?
“This man was Donald Trump’s vice-president and he wouldn’t vote for him,” he continued. “Do you realize how unusual that is? It’s like if macaroni said goodbye to cheese.”
Kimmel then turned to another beleaguered Republican: New York representative George Santos, whose web of lies now seems to include a fictional campaign treasurer that no one can contact or locate. “What if after all the crazy lies and stories and grifts, the many questions about where his money came from, his bogus résumé – what if after all that, with the attention of the whole country on George Santos, he went ahead and made up a fake person to be his campaign treasurer,” Kimmel wondered.
“You’d almost have to hand it to him,” he added. “It’s pathological on a level none of us have ever experienced before.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers continued to delve into the defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems. “For years now, the shtick over at Fox should be the same,” he explained. “They lie to their viewers while simultaneously telling those same viewers that it’s the rest of the media who’s lying to them and that Fox is the only outlet telling the truth.”
But “their shtick is falling apart now that we have definitive proof in these court filings from the billion-dollar Dominion lawsuit that were not only lying, but they knew they were lying”.
Billionaire Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch said under oath that Fox News executives who knowingly allowed lies about the 2020 election to be broadcast “should be reprimanded” or “maybe got rid of”.
“Wow, notice he didn’t say fired. He said ‘got rid of’,” Meyers said. “I’d be a little nervous if I worked over at Fox News. Next time you’re in Rupert’s office, make sure you’re not standing on top of any trapdoors.”
It wasn’t just lying, Meyers continued. The lawsuit has revealed that during the 2020 campaign, Fox News actively helped and provided material aid to the Trump team. Murdoch, for example, provided Jared Kushner with confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy.
“They gave Trump debate strategy?” Meyers marveled. “What was Murdoch’s genius debate tip? Just snort Adderall and never stop talking for 90 minutes?
“We don’t know how this case will turn out,” he concluded. “We do know that the filings once again prove that Fox is not a legitimate news organization.”
