Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s latest day in court, as congressional Republicans flocked to support him and his lawyers grilled Michael Cohen.
Seth Meyers
Donald Trump was back in court on Thursday for his criminal hush-money trial, with several congressional Republicans in tow for support, including JD Vance, Lauren Boebert, Tim Scott and Matt Gaetz. “Man, Beavis and Butthead are everywhere,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night.
“Seriously, there are more Republican members of Congress at Trump’s criminal trial than there are at the Capitol. Just going to throw this out there – might be a good day to storm it?” he joked.
Trump, under a gag order, can’t attack people involved in the case in the way that he wants, “so his workaround is summon his army of puppets to do his bidding”, Meyers explained. “The problem is that character witnesses should be people of high character. Not people of whom you would say, ‘he’s, uh, a real character.’
“If you’re on trial for a criminal charge where character is central to the case, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert aren’t exactly the role models you want with you in the room,” Meyers added of the far-right representatives. “That’s like if OJ’s buddies at his trial were Charles Manson and Hannibal Lecter.”
Nevertheless, Gaetz and Boebert were reportedly sitting in the front row of the courtroom. “Sitting front row at the Trump trial must be like the Maga version of sitting courtside at a Knicks game, except if someone says, ‘Wow, they’re even bigger up close,’ they’re talking about the bags under Trump’s eyes,” Meyers laughed. “This is how grimy and pathetic the Republican party has become: the only thing sadder than having to sit in a dreary New York City courtroom for your porn star hush-money trial is sitting in a dreary New York City courtroom for someone else’s porn star hush-money trial.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also recapped Trump’s day in court, in which Trump’s lawyers grilled his former lawyer Michael Cohen. “As motivation for Cohen’s vindictiveness, the defense tried to show that Cohen felt rejected by Trump,” Colbert explained, including getting him to confirm that he had a hard time securing tickets to Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. “Wow, that had to sting,” said Colbert. “Because we all know there were plenty of seats available.”
Outside the courthouse on Thursday, Trump spoke to reporters to complain about the prosecution, calling the trial “a scam and it’s a sham”.
“Coincidentally, ‘scam’ and ‘sham’ also the Secret Service code names for Eric and Don Jr,” Colbert quipped.
“Trump’s gotta get this trial over with,” Colbert added. “He’s got a busy summer ahead. He’s already agreed to debate Joe Biden twice,” after the president challenged him to two debates on CNN and ABC.
Trump agreed to the terms, but Republicans are already working to undermine them. Vivek Ramaswamy, a potential Trump VP pick, tweeted: “Call me cynical, but why is Biden suddenly so willing to debate? It could be because he’s desperate, or it could be because it’s a set-up.”
“Oh, grow up,” Colbert admonished. “If Biden really wanted to trap Trump, he could just leave a trail of chicken nuggets to a cliff with a sign that said ‘honey mustard below’.”
The Daily Show
Trump's defense attorneys have been doing their best to make Michael Cohen seem less credible than a Boeing in-flight safety video @desilydic pic.twitter.com/QLCWYVuiyv
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) May 17, 2024
Thursday marked another day on the stand for the star witness Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and “all of Long Island distilled into one man”, joked the guest host Desi Lydic on The Daily Show.
Cohen is “the linchpin of the government’s case, because his testimony directly ties Trump to the falsification of business records”, she said. “Which, remember, is the actual crime here. The porn star hush-money part is just a little thing we keep saying because it’s fun.”
For the past few days in court, Trump’s attorneys have been “doing their best to make Cohen seem less credible than a Boeing in-flight safety video”, she joked. They included a clip from Cohen’s Mea Culpa podcast from October 2020, in which he says: “And you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.”
“Wow, that is an angry podcast,” Lydic mused. “It must be hard to keep that level of anger when you also have to read podcast ads.
“Honestly, I feel bad for the jurors,” she added. “As if jury duty isn’t bad enough, now they have to listen to a dude’s podcast? And who is Michael Cohen’s podcast even for? Do the people who hate Trump not have enough content?
“Look, I get the defense’s argument that you can’t trust Michael Cohen because he hates Donald Trump,” she concluded, “but to be fair, everyone who’s ever worked with Donald Trump hates Donald Trump. At some point, you’ve gotta be like, ‘I think it’s Trump.’”
