Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers recapped a historic and busy day in New York, with the arrest of Donald Trump in Manhattan on 34 charges of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
Trump appeared at the downtown courthouse for his arraignment in the early afternoon, and “the media had cameras trained on him all day”, said the Late Night host, “like a panda cam at a zoo hoping to catch a panda having sex and then illegally funneling a hush money payment to the panda they had sex with”.
Before his arrest, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Seem so SURREAL – WOW, they are going to ARREST ME. Can’t believe this is happening in America. MAGA!”
“Trump commented on his own arrest – a watershed moment in American history – the way your grandpa posts on Facebook about his trip to Italy,” Meyers laughed, imagining a similar post: “Wow! Seems so surreal! I can’t believe the pizza is better at home! Your grandmother says hello!”
The 34 counts of falsifying records are a class E felony (the lowest level of felony) in the state of New York. “Not just 34 charges – 34 felonies! Holy shit,” said Meyers. “In order to raise the $130,000 he used to pay off Stormy Daniels, did he also rob a bank in a Halloween mask? Of course, knowing Trump, he’d wear a mask of his own face.
“We saw something historic today, and in many ways, it was healthy to see business unfolding as normal in New York,” Meyers concluded. “Because this is how a healthy democracy and criminal justice system should be functioning.”
Stephen Colbert
“I know, it feels good, but remember: he is innocent until he is proven so, so guilty,” said Stephen Colbert of Trump’s arrest on Tuesday evening.
At the courthouse, Trump was read his Miranda rights, “then he claimed that Miranda wasn’t even his type, asked her to sign an NDA and got indicted again”, the Late Show host quipped.
Despite calls for a mass protest, there were so few Maga protesters in New York that reporters had to line up to talk to them. “It’s never a good sign when there are fewer people at your current rally than are in prison for your last one,” Colbert mused.
The host also mulled an “uneasy feeling” stemming from the arrest, “because no matter how you feel about the ex-president … the man who was arrested today is likely to be the Republican nominee for president, even if he has to accept the nomination on the phone through Plexiglass,” he said.
“So all of this was weird and totally unprecedented, and yet it still feels like the right thing to do. In the same way it would be weird and unprecedented to shoot a [tranquilizer] dart inside the US supreme court, but it would be the right thing to do if the Senate confirmed chief justice Cocaine Bear.”
The Daily Show
To think...Trump had the option to do this whole arraignment over Zoom. @roywoodjr pic.twitter.com/3MrUWgesng
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 5, 2023
And on The Daily Show, guest host Roy Wood Jr also sorted through his feelings about the Trump arrest. “This is how I know Trump did something – I don’t know what he’s guilty of, but he did something. Look at that outfit – first day of court, and he’s in a suit that don’t even fit,” he began. “Why would you do that? Gwyneth Paltrow showed you the cheat code, boy! You’ve got to dress like you don’t give a fuck. You’ve got to dress for court like you’re on your way to somewhere else.”
Wood also touched on reports that Trump was given the option to be arraigned over Zoom. “I completely get why Trump didn’t do it over Zoom,” he explained. “One, he would’ve gotten on camera and they’d have found more classified documents in the background. Two, Trump wants publicity.” Wood pointed to photos of Trump exiting his tower in Manhattan on Tuesday, “giving the Black power fist like a real political prisoner”.
“He lives for shit like this,” he said. “Hell, Trump’s liable to show up to court every day dancing on top of a car like Michael Jackson.
“Donald Trump deserves a fair trial, but I also want Trump to get the full American criminal justice experience, which is not what happened today,” he added. Trump scheduled his arraignment “like he’s the cable man”, was not handcuffed, no mugshot, no perp walk.
Wood was left disappointed, “because today shows you how humane our courts could be. So many people get dragged into this legal system, and it’s humiliating,” with handcuffs, waiting days or months for an arraignment, invasive drug searches and more. “For the sake of this country, I hope that Donald Trump gets a swift trial,” he concluded. “But that doesn’t mean he should get to use the TSA pre-check lane.”
