Late-night hosts talk Senator Robert Menendez’s old-school corruption scandal, the northern lights in Florida and Donald Trump’s speech praising Hannibal Lecter.
The Daily Show
While most eyes have been trained on Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial in New York, Jon Stewart looked at America’s other major political corruption trial: that of the New Jersey senator Robert Menendez.
The 70-year-old senator faces 16 counts of federal bribery charges for allegedly conspiring with his wife, Nadine, to accept bribes from wealthy businessmen in exchange for political favors to help the governments of Qatar and Egypt. The prosecution’s evidence recovered from Menendez’s house includes boots stuffed with cash, gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, furniture, exercise equipment and cash found in the lining of the senator’s embroidered congressional jacket.
Upon returning from a trip to Egypt, Menendez also Googled “how much is one kilo of gold worth?” “Damn you, metric system!” Stewart joked.
Menendez has proclaimed innocence. According to the New York Times, he said his cash habit was the result of “traumatic” family history. “These are simply my emotional support gold bars,” Stewart joked as the senator. “Whenever I’m not with them, I get anxious. We respond to trauma in different ways.”
“But perhaps the dumbest thing about this entire, not-quite-believable Real Housewives episode is how unnecessary it all is,” said Stewart. “You, sir, are an elected official in America’s most respected legislative body. It’s like a license to print money. You don’t need to break the law so cartoonishly when the legal corruption in the Senate is so fucking lucrative.” The trial occasioned a new Daily Show segment: “Senator Robert Menendez, how dumb is you?”
As Stewart explained: “Promising favors to foreign entities for a little chump change on the side? It’s bush league when as a US senator you can enrich yourself in so many different, let’s call them ‘legal’, ways.” The host let Menendez in on the workings of insider trading, writing laws that benefit a side business, “like the way Senator Chuck Grassley netted $370,000 in farm subsidies” and leadership PACs that essentially operate as lobbyist slush funds. “A pharma lobbyist cannot buy a senator a panini and some NyQuil,” he said, “but through the Pac, they can pay for five-star hotels for Senator Kristen Gillibrand, luxury resorts for Ted Cruz and even golf lessons for Rand Paul.
“At every turn, our Congress and our courts have been given a choice: be less corrupt, or redefine what constitutes corruption and get on with your bad selves,” Stewart added. “Robert Menendez’s gold bars in exchange for favorable legislation is obviously cartoonishly corrupt, but for anyone out there who thinks the status quo of government patronage and influence is of an entirely different species than Menendez … how dumb is you?”
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert hosted The Late Show on his 60th birthday, which coincided with extra-vivid instances of the aurora borealis, caused by a massive solar storm in which large explosive bursts of energy from the sun started slamming into Earth. “Or to put that in layman’s terms: God was on shrooms and was hankering for a little laser Zeppelin,” Colbert joked.
The lights could be seen as far south as Florida, “where Governor DeSantis immediately banned the sky for displaying a Pride flag”, he quipped.
The host then checked in on week four of Trump’s “faking business records to cover up banging a porn star trial”. This week features star witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who served as the middleman in the alleged $130,000 hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. “You never want to be the middleman between your boss and a porn star,” Colbert joked. “Sure, it sounds titillating when they ask, but eventually it’s a tangle of limbs and you’re just kinda watching.”
According to Cohen, Trump was not concerned that the revelation he paid hush money to Stormy Daniels would threaten his marriage to Melania, telling him: “Don’t worry … how long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long.”
“Coincidentally, ‘not long’ is how Stormy described it,” Colbert joked. “But it’s true: he would be off the market soon. I mean, he’s clearly past his expiration date.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped a Trump rally in New Jersey in which the former president denigrated Bruce Springsteen (“we have a much bigger crowd”) and praised “the late, great Hannibal Lecter, he’s a wonderful man”.
“Is that a fucking bit we did?” Meyers exclaimed. “Who the hell goes to New Jersey and attacks Bruce Springsteen? What’s next on your cross-country insult tour? Are you going to go to Boston and attack Ben Affleck while you drink Starbucks in a Yankees hat?”
The curious references led reporters to ask Trump outside his trial: why defend the serial killer character?
“‘Why Hannibal Lecter?’ is such an amazing question to yell at a presidential candidate,” Meyers laughed. “By the way, that question was nestled between two other questions about his criminal trial for defrauding voters by paying hush money to a porn star. For any other presidential candidate, getting asked the question ‘why Hannibal Lecter?’ would mean you’re in a five-alarm shit storm, but for Trump? Just a normal Monday.”
