Stephen Colbert
Returning to the Late Show after an Easter break, Stephen Colbert examined two government scandals from the weekend. First, the leak of classified US intelligence documents, which first appeared on a Discord server weeks ago.
According to one investigator, “this shit was sitting in a Minecraft Discord server for a month and no one noticed”.
“So national secrets were on a video game chat?” Colbert marveled. “Turns out the nuclear launch codes were up up, down down, right, B, A, start.”
To make matters weirder, the leaked documents were not uploaded. Rather, photos were posted of crumpled documents, as if they’d been hastily folded up and shoved into a pocket. “That’s it? The technology was ‘put in pocket’?” Colbert wondered. “The movies make stealing national secrets look so much harder. Get ready for the new Tom Cruise movie, Mission Impossible – Wait, I Just Shoved It in My Pants.”
The leak was a “big time yikes for the executive branch”, he continued, but also, the “judiciary is a disaster right now” after ProPublica reported that the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas secretly accepted luxury trips worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a billionaire GOP donor, Harlan Crow.
“Wow, I can’t believe Clarence Thomas did something inappropriate, said a woolly mammoth after being reanimated from the Siberian permafrost,” Colbert deadpanned.
The trips happened virtually every year for more than two decades, and included trips around the world on Crow’s superyacht and flying on his private jet.
Thomas claims he was advised by colleagues that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable”.
“Adding, ‘Now I gotta get back on deck before we lose that golden hour sun. #yachtlife #somelikeityacht,’” Colbert joked.
Thomas also said the gifts didn’t count because of his personal relationship with Crow extending back 25 years. “OK, but you’ve been on the court for 31 years,” Colbert noted, which could still make the friendship count as a bribe.
“OK, I’ll bite. So he’s your close personal friend that you know everything about,” Colbert continued, “so I guess it would be really embarrassing to learn that Harlan Crow has a collection of Adolf Hitler artifacts and Nazi memorabilia”, including two paintings by Hitler and linens embroidered with swastikas.
“Ladies, take note: that is a red flag,” said Colbert. “You never want to have to tell your gal pals, ‘So, I finally spent the night at Todd’s … it was good but he’s got this really intense gaming set-up and two paintings by Hitler. Should I text him back?’”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel recapped an unhinged Easter post from Donald Trump. Posting in all caps on Truth Social, the former president wished a “Happy Easter to all, including those that dream endlessly of destroying our country because they are incapable of dreaming of anything else” among other campaign messages about the wall, socialists, Marxists and communists.
“What a warm and lovely man he is,” Kimmel deadpanned. “Instead of license plates in jail, they should have him write greeting cards. I think that would be a better use of his gifts.
“At this point, Donald Trump’s brain is basically a bowl of microwaved Peeps.”
Kimmel also reported a Melania sighting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the holiday. “Poor Melania. Imagine after everything he put her through last week, and then he wakes her up on Easter and says, ‘I need you to come downstairs and eat an omelet on camera with me today,’” said Kimmel.
Trump also filed a last-minute appeal to block Mike Pence from testifying before a grand jury about his conversations with Trump on January 6, even though Pence himself did not try to appeal that order. “I don’t know, maybe Trump should just pay Mike Pence $130,000 to keep his mouth shut,” Kimmel joked.
