Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel dug into the House January 6 committee’s 10th and potentially final public hearing on Thursday, which “felt a lot like Game of Thrones coming back but instead of dragons roasting people alive, Liz Cheney was doing it”.
“A lot of the evidence in these hearings came from Trump’s inner circle,” Kimmel added. “This is like if OJ had been turned in by his gloves.”
Among the evidence presented on Thursday was video testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. According to Hutchinson, Donald Trump was well aware that he lost the 2020 election, telling chief of staff Mark Meadows: “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark, this is embarrassing.”
“Is that more embarrassing than continuing to say you won an election two years after you lost that election?” Kimmel fumed. “Man, did his parents do a number on him.”
The committee also presented audio of Trump aides Steve Bannon and Roger Stone baldly stating plans to discredit the election before the results were known. “After seeing all this evidence, it’s crazy that the only Trump being held in prison right now is Melania,” Kimmel joked.
The hearing ended with a bombshell: the committee voted 9-0 to subpoena Donald Trump to testify before the House, “which, unless the House is of pancakes, that’s just not going to happen”, said Kimmel. “It’s like sending a cease-and-desist to a hurricane. At this point, I don’t know what they need to hear from him. It’s all there. The case against Trump is about as obvious as an episode of Scooby-Doo.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also cheered the House committee’s subpoena for Trump. “And to make sure the former president reads the subpoena, it’s being printed on the wrapper of a Gordita Supreme,” he joked.
The hearing was “a clip show”, he added, “a look back at the top moments of season one, when the former president tried to strangle a Secret Service agent, Josh Hawley scampered away like a frightened squirrel, and of course the very special episode where the committee got married and had a baby”.
The committee’s evidence demonstrated that Trump and his associates “were already planning to lie about the election results as early as October 31,” Colbert explained. “That’s the spookiest Halloween ever – trick or treason, it’s a boo d’etat!”
Such evidence included audio of Bannon saying, on 31 October 2020: “And what Trump’s gonna do is he’s going to declare victory … he’s gonna sit right there and say they stole it … If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.”
“Usually when you hear someone lay out an evil plan that baldly, James Bond is strapped to a table with a laser pointed at his balls,” Colbert joked.
Seth Meyers
“Can you imagine Donald Trump complying with a subpoena from the January 6 committee?” Seth Meyers wondered on Late Night. “Watching him testify before Congress would be insane. He’d go on all sorts of insane rants and attack people. It would be like casting an actual lion in the Lion King.
“It will be fascinating to see what happens with the Trump subpoena, but it was definitely necessary,” he continued. “The reason why it’s so important to investigate the last coup attempt is because the next one is already under way.”
Meanwhile, Trump has been on the midterm campaign trail and bragged about the crowd size of the mob on January 6. “Trump’s out there, on camera, in front of a microphone bragging about the size of the crowd of an attempted violent coup for which he is under multiple criminal investigations currently,” said Meyers.
“This is like if during his trial, OJ was also doing ads for a leather apparel company with the slogan ‘When I do a hit, I like to wear gloves that fit.’”
Trevor Noah
The real question is, how is the January 6 Committee only deciding to subpoena Trump now?! pic.twitter.com/eFlWohXJfJ
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 14, 2022
And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah homed in on another revelation from the hearing: video of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in hiding from the mob, relaying reports of rioters defecating in the Capitol.
“When I was watching this happen, I thought to myself it’s so interesting how people like Tucker Carlson were calling black people animals when the George Floyd protests were happening,” said Noah. “But when these people were literally shitting in the Capitol, Fox was like, ‘These brave patriots are just expressing their frustration and standing up for American democracy!’
“They’re not the animals?” he continued. “I can tell you for a fact that in Minnesota when shit was going down and people were raiding that Target, there was no black man who stopped in the middle of all of that” and defecated.
As for Trump’s subpoena, Noah had one question: “How are they only deciding on this now? Only now? It’s like doing a whole murder investigation and on the last day being like, ‘Should we, like, talk to the murderer?’”
While most people assume Trump will not cooperate, Noah predicted the former president might feel conflicted. “On the one hand, yes, he thinks this is a crooked witch-hunt that is out to get him, but on the other hand, the ratings,” he said. “Can you imagine the ratings? This would be like the Super Bowl meets Watergate meets Game of Thrones meets a mandatory HR video about sexual harassment – everyone will be watching.”
