Seth Meyers
Late-night hosts kept abreast of the chaos in Congress on Wednesday evening, as House Republicans chose Louisiana’s Steve Scalise to maybe take over as speaker of the House.
“As we’ve seen before, winning the GOP nomination for speaker definitely does not mean you will become speaker,” explained Seth Meyers on Late Night. “It’s kind of like an actor getting a callback for a bit part on Succession. You didn’t actually get the part yet and even if you do, you’ll probably just get yelled at and shitcanned by the end of the episode.”
Scalise is a far-right Republican who voted to overturn the 2020 election and has refused in interviews to state without equivocation that Joe Biden won. In a 2021 interview with ABC News, Scalise also declined to pin responsibility for January 6 on Trump, saying he “ended up” at Mar-a-Lago to meet with the then-president post-insurrection. “No one just ends up at Mar-a-Lago,” said Meyers. “Mar-a-Lago is a place you go to for one of three reasons: a kiss-up to Trump, a real bad wedding, or if you’re a foreign spy looking to overhear our nation’s nuclear secrets at the dinner buffet.”
In other congressional messes, GOP representative George Santos of New York was hit with even more fraud charges, including illegally charging his campaign donors’ credit cards. “He’s less like a member of Congress and more like a telemarketer scam your grandpa would fall for,” Meyers remarked.
“Is there a crime George Santos hasn’t been accused of?” he added.
When asked about the charges by reporters on Capitol Hill, Santos plead ignorance – he was in a meeting without access to his phone, he said while holding his phone. “Nothing sums up George Santos more than claiming he didn’t have access to his phone while talking on his phone,” said Meyers. “Unless that’s not his phone and he stole it from someone’s grandpa.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped how the “rudderless Republicans in Congress have moved tantalizingly close to doing the bare minimum”, as they chose Steve Scalise to “be the nominee to possibly then be speaker of the House”.
“Congratulations Steve, you’re one step closer to having the worst job in the world, just one wrung below emptying Porta Potties at a chili cook-off,” Colbert joked.
Colbert also returned to the butt of many a late-night joke, Santos, who “might be the lying-est liar lying in Congress” and now faces 10 new federal fraud charges including wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false statements to the Federal Election Commission.
“Let me just say: thank you, George Santos. It’s been a really tough week in the news, and we needed a treat,” said Colbert. “The bitch is back for a squeakquel and I am here for it.”
The new charges brings the total number of counts against him to 23. “Congratulations, George, 68 more and you can run for president,” Colbert quipped.
Jimmy Kimmel
Scalise may be the GOP nominee for speaker of the House, but “it’s still unclear, though, if he has enough votes to win the speakership,” said Jimmy Kimmel. “Because that would require Republicans to accept the result of an election, and that’s really not their thing.”
“If you see white smoke coming from the Capitol rotunda, it means they either picked a new speaker or Lauren Boebert is vaping again,” he added.
Kimmel also mocked Santos’s run from Capitol Hill reporters. “Only George Santos would say he has no access to his phone while he is on that very phone,” he laughed.
Santos denied almost all charges as reporters harangued him in the halls of Congress, until he slammed his office door shut. “He should get used to being in a confined space, because the prison walls are closing in,” Kimmel mused.
