Late-night hosts talk the many scandals surrounding Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” and Joe Biden’s potential preemptive pardons.
Jimmy Kimmel
It’s been a week of damaging stories about Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, and Jimmy Kimmel dug into him more on Thursday evening after numerous reports of sexual misconduct and unprofessional drunken behavior.
Hegseth was on Capitol Hill this week to defend his nomination and answer lawmakers’ and reporters’ questions. Asked by a reporter what Trump made of the allegations, Hegseth said, “He’s behind us all the way. I spoke to him this morning,” then awkwardly looked away from the camera.
“Something tells me that might be the last time you speak to the president,” said Kimmel. “Something tells me we might be able to get Pete Hegseth Cameo videos for Christmas this year.”
Hegseth, a military veteran turned former Fox & Friends host, was “not even remotely qualified to be secretary of defense”, Kimmel noted. “We’ve already forgotten about” other allegations, he continued, such as that Hegseth raped a woman he met at a bar in 2017. Hegseth allegedly paid a settlement to the woman, who signed an NDA that Republican supporters now want enforced.
“You wouldn’t hire someone to walk your dog if they paid a woman to be quiet about a rape,” Kimmel said.
The host also touched on Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge. Though appointed by Trump, the new department “has no power to make laws, cut budget or do anything”, Kimmel explained. “It’s like when you’re a kid and you visit the cockpit, you get a set of wings. It doesn’t mean you get to fly the plane.”
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped another report on Hegseth’s drunken behavior, this time at a 2016 Fox News Christmas party where complaints led to a human resources intervention. “The HR talking-to clearly didn’t work,” Colbert reported, because soon after, Hegseth attended the wedding of a Fox News colleague where he reportedly got so drunk that he struggled to stay upright in a bathroom. Friends asked a producer who was there to get him a ride home.
“OK, finally, someone at Fox News who’s responsible … is what I would say if that sentence did not end with ‘so he could make it to the set by 6am’,” said Colbert. He imagined the logic: “This man is clearly too drunk to stand! Quick, get him to a couch and point a camera at him.”
Hegseth has continued to pursue the nomination and dismiss the well-sourced reports as “the classic art of the smear”, as he said this week on Megyn Kelly’s radio show. He referred to the stories as “tiny, tiny kernels of truth” blown out of proportion.
“Coincidentally, taking tiny kernels and blowing them up is exactly how I’ve been watching the drama around Pete Hegseth,” said Colbert, holding a bag of popcorn.
The Daily Show
If anyone doesn't want to accept their presidential pardon, @ronnychieng will happily take it off their hands pic.twitter.com/hCwpUPgHFO
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 6, 2024
And on The Daily Show, guest host Ronny Chieng noted that Joe Biden is reportedly weighing preemptive pardons for figures who have spoken out against Trump and who the president-elect has targeted, such as Adam Schiff and Anthony Fauci. But the White House is “carefully weighing the extraordinary step” of blanket pardons after outrage over his pardoning of son Hunter, both because preemptive pardons could suggest impropriety and because there is a chance those offered them will not accept.
“Pardons are getting so confusing,” said Chieng. “I mean, it used to be that you had to commit a crime to be pardoned, but now Biden has to do this weird Minority Report pre-pardon thing where it’s like, ‘Hey, we know you didn’t do anything, but Trump thinks you did something so I’m going to pardon you for anything you did. Even though you didn’t do it. It’s what our founders would’ve wanted.’
“Also, who in their right mind would reject a presidential pardon?!” he exclaimed. “You want to go to jail? That’s where Diddy is!”
Chieng joked that he would happily take any pardons others didn’t want. “Hand it over. I’ll probably need it if Donald Trump comes after me for political satire or speaking truth to power or opening a credit card in my roommate’s name.”
