Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers looked ahead to several major questions for the House January 6 committee on Wednesday evening, including whether to subpoena Donald Trump himself. “I gotta be honest, if I was on the committee, I’m not sure where I would land on the question of whether to subpoena Trump,” the Late Night host said.
“I mean, on the one hand it would be great to get him under oath on camera, so you could make him answer questions in front of the public under the threat of perjury,” he continued. “On the other hand, he’s not going to answer questions under threat of perjury. Putting Trump on the stand is as good an idea as putting a chimpanzee in a school play – he’s not going to stick to the script.
“Trump can’t even answer softball questions from his friends on Fox News without going off on deranged tangents,” he added. “It would take days. The networks would have to pre-empt all their programming so Trump could ramble about statues or ax murders or windmills or toilets that don’t flush, although it would be nice to get him under oath about the toilets he’s always talking about.”
The committee will also use footage from a documentary that shows the Trump associate Roger Stone anticipating the insurrection before the 2020 election. In footage captured by Danish film-makers for A Storm Foretold, Stone explains how Trump will discredit the election and use armed guards to refuse to cede power.
“Why do all these guys explain their criminal schemes out loud in highly specific details before they do them?” Meyers wondered. “They’re like Bond villains spelling out exactly how they’re going to kill him right before he slips out of his handcuffs.”
Trevor Noah
Make no mistake, Hurricane Ian is the real deal, unlike the other stuff Ron DeSantis tells Floridians to be afraid of pic.twitter.com/dpVtsHulR8
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 29, 2022
“As we speak, Hurricane Ian is slamming into Florida, and I honestly hope that everyone in the Sunshine state is staying safe,” said Trevor Noah on the Daily Show. “Like I mean, rest of America safe, not like Florida safe, you know? Like when someone wears a long-sleeve shirt to wrestle a gator.
“Just be safe safe,” he added. “Because I know you guys are brave, but this hurricane – I mean, you heard Governor DeSantis, he said, ‘this thing is the real deal. Not like the usual stuff I tell you to be scared of, like drag queens or critical race theory. I’m talking real! Like I might fly myself to Martha’s Vineyard.’”
The devastating category 4 storm that hit Florida overnight Wednesday included sustained winds of over 150mph, with a storm surge of 18 feet. “This shit is wild!” said Noah, who also had to wonder: why do we still name natural disasters? “It’s a weird thing we do,” he said. “We don’t do that with personal disasters. There’s no doctor who’s ever been like ‘I have some bad news … Jeremy has spread to your brain.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert reacted to excerpts from a new book on the Trump presidency from the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. According to Confidence Man, Trump was having dinner with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer when he turned to their non-white staffers and said “why don’t you get the food?”
“That is just awful,” said Colbert, “but to be fair, that’s what he says in every situation.”
Haberman also revealed that Trump nearly fired his daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, via tweet. “That would be an awful way to find out they lost their jobs as … handbag blondeface?” Colbert joked. “Haunted scarecrow? His and hers towel racks? I don’t know what they did.
“In the end, the ex-president did what he has done his whole life: he avoided his children. He never fired them, and as we all know, Jared went on to achieve Middle East peace,” Colbert deadpanned.
The host also celebrated a historic moment from Lizzo, who played James Madison’s crystal flute from 1813 during her concert in Washington DC before telling the crowd “history is freaking cool, you guys.”
“Wow, what an incredible gift to every dorky social studies teacher in America,” said Colbert.
Jimmy Kimmel
And Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged a new Forbes 400 list declaring Elon Musk the richest man in America, with a net worth of $251bn. The Tesla CEO beat out Jeff Bezos, who “ceded his spot at No 1 in a show of solidarity with employees who aren’t allowed to go No 1 on the job,” Kimmel joked.
Trump is also back on the list, coming in at No 343, “which hopefully will soon be his inmate number as well”, said Kimmel.
Kimmel also touched on the report in Haberman’s book that the former Trump chief of staff John Kelly convinced him not to fire Jared and Ivanka via tweet by “waving a KFC drumstick in front of him and tossing it across the room”, said Kimmel.
“According to this book, everyone who worked at the White House, including his family, thought Trump was a dangerous, unpredictable child,” Kimmel added. “And on behalf of all of us, I just want to say thank you to those brave men and women who kept that information to themselves and away from the American people who could have removed him from office.”
