Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers roasted Republicans for distracting the public from the end of Roe v Wade, starting with the Maine senator Susan Collins. The Republican senator, who claims to be pro-choice but voted to confirm the conservative supreme court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, called the police in Maine this week on a protester who chalked a message – “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA – vote yes, clean up your mess” – outside her house. (WHPA refers to the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights.)
“That’s right, Susan Collins called the cops because someone wrote with chalk on the sidewalk outside her house,” the Late Night host said on Wednesday evening. “Did she freak out when there’s a yard sale in her neighborhood? And the note wasn’t even threatening! It said please.
“Of course, Susan Collins claims she’s pro-choice,” Meyers continued, “but in reality she and her fellow Republicans would much rather spend their time freaking out about polite chalk messages or the identity of the person who leaked the supreme court opinion than the actual substance of what’s happening: that the supreme court is on the verge of erasing a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, and that states are already pushing forward with severe new restrictions on reproductive rights.”
Though it’s possible the draft opinion was leaked by a conservative employee of the court, Republicans such as Ted Cruz have maintained, without evidence, that it had to be a “leftwing law clerk” who was at fault. Asked why, Cruz told a reporter: “because I’m not a moron. Because I live on planet Earth.”
“Eh, you might live here, but clearly you’re not from here,” said Meyers. “I refuse to believe that voice is actually human. You sound like you swallowed a kazoo, and that beard definitely looks like a disguise you’d see in Men in Black.
“We don’t know who the leaker is – (cough) Ginni Thomas (cough),” Meyers added, “but Republicans would much rather focus on the leak than the substance of the bill they blocked today. Because preserving Roe v Wade is massively popular.”
Despite overlapping crises – the threat against bodily autonomy, the rising cost of living, impending climate disaster – “Republicans would rather whine and throw tantrums about leaks and sidewalk chalk,” he concluded. “These people talk about leaks so much, you’d think their pants were,” to quote Trump talking about his belief in hurricane guns, “tremendously wet”.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel mourned a “stupefying day in the history of this country” as the Senate failed to pass the WHPA, which would have codified abortion rights nationwide. Every Democrat voted for the measure, which needed 60 votes to pass, except Joe Manchin, “who voted with his fellow Republicans”, Kimmel quipped.
“The Democrats wanted to get their counterparts on the record opposing it. Chuck Schumer said he called for the vote so we would know where Republicans stand,” Kimmel said. “Turns out they’re standing in the year 1865. Almost feels like maybe we shouldn’t have let the host of Celebrity Apprentice pick three supreme court justices, you know?”
Kimmel also discussed “some five-star nonsense” on the Senate floor. Steve Daines, Republican senator from Montana, presented an argument that “he seems to have gotten from an old Saturday cartoon”, Kimmel said.
Next to a poster featuring pictures of sea turtles and human babies, Daines argued for banning abortion because it’s illegal to tamper with the eggs of federally protected species such as sea turtles. “OK, now I have some visual aids to explain just how dumb that was,” Kimmel said, whipping out a sea turtle puppet. “Hello, I’m a sea turtle. I can’t believe I need to say this, but we aren’t human beings.
“Now, I know some of you might look like us,” he added next to a photo of the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, “but sea turtles, we are an endangered species. Humans are not. And if a mama sea turtle doesn’t want to have a baby, there’s no old white guy from Montana telling her she has to. She just lays her eggs in the sand and crawls away. And unlike people, mama sea turtles don’t have to work to support their kids or feed them or drive them to school.
“It’s very simple, right?” Kimmel concluded.
