Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert was “still all hot and bothered about that FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago” on Wednesday evening, he said on the Late Show. “Turns out my kink is consequences.”
The surprise FBI search of Trump’s private residence in Florida, for which they had a search warrant, was part of a long-running investigation into whether the former president took classified records from the White House. “Spoiler: he did. We already know he did,” Colbert said.
“No matter what it is, it’s always what you thought but worse than you imagined. He incited an insurrection, he extorted Ukraine, he put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop. He put the ram in the rama lama ding dong, then made the rama lama ding dong sign an NDA.
“He’s already admitted that he did it,” Colbert continued, as seven months ago, Trump revealed that he had unlawful possession of classified material when he returned 15 boxes of it to the National Archives. During Monday’s search, the FBI reportedly retrieved another 12 boxes from the basement storage area.
“That’s where he kept classified government documents? In a basement in Florida?” Colbert marveled. “Was there no room left in the kiddie pool full of pythons and mildew?
“It gets worse,” he continued, because it was only after Trump’s lawyers received instructions to secure the room this past spring did they add a padlock. “So before, it was just open,” Colbert explained. “It would make a great action movie – National Treasure 3: Found It Behind the Christmas Ornaments!”
Trevor Noah
Trump pleading the fifth shows that of all of Trump's enemies, his worst enemy is just him from the past. pic.twitter.com/oFS9hRplnl
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 11, 2022
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah turned to a different legal woe for the former president: the New York attorney general’s investigation into his business practices, for which Trump declined to answer questions by pleading the fifth amendment. “Trump decided not to talk?” Noah laughed. “Now we know something shady is going on, right? Because when has Donald Trump ever refused to talk. We can’t get the man to stop talking!
“Donald Trump not talking is like Taylor Swift taking the bus – that’s not a thing!” he added. “I didn’t even know this guy was capable of not talking.”
Noah noted good reasons to plead the fifth regardless of guilt, although “there are some people who truly believe that if you plead the fifth, you are guilty. And one of those people is Donald J Trump,” said Noah before a series of clips in which Trump equated pleading the fifth to an admission of guilt.
“It’s really amazing how of all of Trump’s enemies, his worst enemy is just him from the past,” Noah said. “That guy’s relentless. Present-day Trump is probably like ‘why won’t this guy just shut up, it’s so easy. Just watch – quiet.’
“So when anyone else pleads the fifth, Trump says it proves that they’re a criminal. But now that Trump is in the hot seat, suddenly he sees it a different way,” Noah concluded. “And maybe it’s because his lawyers explained it to him in a way that he could understand – they’re like, ‘see, sir, it’s like signing an NDA, but with yourself.’”
Jimmy Fallon
And on the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon also expressed surprise at Trump pleading the fifth. “Trump was like, ‘I’m not saying anything self-incriminating – that’s what my rallies are for,’” Fallon joked.
“In the past, Trump has said that only guilty people and mobsters plead the fifth, to which the FBI said: ‘So … which one are you?’”
Fallon also touched on the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago after a confidential informer told them which documents Trump had and where he was keeping them. “Right now, Rudy Giuliani is thinking, ‘Oh crap, did I butt-dial the FBI again?’” Fallon quipped.
“No one knows who it is, but Eric [Trump] just started wearing a pin that says ‘FBI’s lil helper.’”
And a federal court ruled that Trump must hand over his tax returns to Congress. “Americans are like, ‘his taxes? God, that was like 10 scandals ago,’” Fallon said. “At this point, there are more Trump investigations than there are streaming platforms.”
