Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump forgetting names, Republicans fawning over the former president and rightwing hypocrisy on gun violence.
The Daily Show
Jon Stewart, returning to his guest hosting slot on the Daily Show, pondered an important question on Monday evening: “If crime is down so much, why do people, especially on the right, feel like it’s up?”
Stewart, citing a number of Fox News commentators and Republican congressmen fearmongering about crime in New York and other cities, had one message: “The balls of these rightwing motherfuckers talking about how there’s too much gun crime and chaos in our Democratic cities, when Republicans are the ones who’ve enabled the flood of illegal weaponry into our cities in the first place.
“Ninety-three per cent of the illegal guns used in crimes in New York City aren’t from here – they, like theater majors, have come here to make a name for themselves,” he continued. The guns come from states like Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, “where the gun laws are lax, and trust me, Florida is not sending us their best guns. They’re bringing guns for drugs and crime and rapists, and some, I assume, are good guns. And try as we might to put up some border controls to stem this invasion, this flood of literally undocumented weapons, Republicans fight every attempt to bring some kind of order and even pass laws to increase the chaos.”
To illustrate the cynicism, Stewart pointed to Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who has decried crime in Democratic cities on cable news while fighting regulation of gun stores like the two he owns, which have sold at least 25 guns later implicated in violent crimes.
“It’s almost as though Republicans must have a secret plan for this, funded by their billionaires, to flood our cities with illegal, undocumented guns, pouring them over our state borders in the hopes of killing off reliable Democratic voters,” Stewart said, calling it, mockingly, the “great displacement theory”.
“So, there’s only one real solution. Unfortunately, for the borders of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, we have to – what’s that word?” he concluded to a clip of Trump supporters yelling: “Build that wall!”
Seth Meyers
Trump visited Capitol Hill for the first time since January 6 last Thursday, “and Republicans didn’t just greet him warmly”, said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “They heaped so much cloying, gratuitous praise on him, you’d think they just reconnected with their biological father.”
This included a standing ovation, a rendition of Happy Birthday and much post-facto adulation on cable news. “Seriously, do you guys hear yourselves fawning over Trump?” Meyers wondered. “You’re talking about a serial liar and con artist who lost the popular vote twice, fomented a violent coup attempt that almost got you killed, just got convicted of 34 felonies and looks like the Roadrunner just tricked him into blowing himself up.
“Republicans are such obsessive sycophants, they want us to all believe that secretly behind the scenes, Trump is actually a sweet, strong, compassionate genius, while in public, he can’t even read words or remember names,” he added. Meyers referred to the latest example over the weekend, when Trump misnamed his White House doctor while bragging about his cognitive test results.
“Bragging about acing a cognitive test while forgetting the name of the doctor who gave it to you is like writing on a résumé that you speak three languages and misspelling the word ‘languages’,” Meyers said.
Stephen Colbert
At a rally over the weekend, Trump boasted that he was so popular, “we don’t need your vote! We got so many votes, we don’t need ’em.”
“You heard Trump, folks: he doesn’t need your vote!” Stephen Colbert cheered on the Late Show. “You know what, on 5 November, take a ‘you’ day Maga-style. Go get your gun a mani-pedi, maybe a couples massage with your truck. Yell at your kids’ teacher about how the Very Hungry Caterpillar transitions into a butterfly. Have fun!”
Trump went to Capitol Hill on Thursday, “to meet people from what used to be called the Grand Old Party”, said Colbert. “And even some of those spineless doofuses noticed that his brain be broke.” One source described the former president’s closed-door speech as “rambling … like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion”.
“Bear in mind, the person saying that was a Republican congressman,” Colbert noted, “so it’s really like your drunk uncle pulling you aside to warn you that there’s an even drunker uncle in the room.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel marveled at Trump’s rage-filled Father’s Day post on Truth Social, which mostly took aim at Democrats. “I guess you’d be mad on Father’s Day, if there was a whole day dedicated to your two biggest failures,” said Kimmel.
The host also mocked Trump forgetting the name of his White House doctor, referring to him as Dr Johnson instead of Dr Ronny Jackson. “If that was another cognitive test, you failed it,” Kimmel said.
In the same speech, Trump also ranted about the water pressure in dishwashers. “Not only is this nonsense – when do you think is the last time Trump loaded a dishwasher? Maybe … never?” Kimmel wondered.
“This man has done more for water pressure than any president in history,” he laughed. “I hope they have good water pressure in the showers at Rikers Island, because he is not going to like that.”
