Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert continued to focus on the devastating toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday evening, as the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, finally visited the site nearly three weeks after the disaster.
“Twenty days late!” the Late Show host said. “I’m glad he’s not an EMT.”
And it “looks like Buttigieg knows he acted slowly”, Colbert continued, as the transportation secretary admitted to reporters that he “could have spoken out sooner”.
“Adding, ‘And I would’ve been here earlier but traffic was a mess, trains are a disaster, all the flights were cancelled – someone should really deal with this country’s transportation!’” Colbert joked.
The host then turned to a perennial target, Fox News, as “it’s important to give them their props when they deserve it. And here’s the thing: it’s a 24-hour news channel, and that can be hard to fill.” Colbert jokingly saluted “their ability to just invent outrage out of absolutely nothing on a slow news day”.
This week, the network “dug down deep, tossed aside any last scraps of journalistic integrity, and yanked out a new dumb thing to pretend to be mad at”, he continued. “And because I also need something to talk about every night, I’m going to pretend to be mad at them for pretending to be mad about it.”
The latest invented controversy? New Lego characters with different skin tones, limb differences and disabilities, “or as Fox News put it: ‘Lego is going woke!’”
“I don’t know why Fox is so upset about seeing representation in Legos,” Colbert mocked. “After all, I’m pretty sure Sean Hannity is one.”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to possible indictments from a Georgia grand jury over Donald Trump’s attempted election interference in Georgia. “Probably the most that will happen is Trump’s lawyers will have another opportunity to file nuisance objections and delay the verdict, which is basically Trump’s strategy for everything,” Kimmel explained. “He’s almost 80 – if he can keep delaying long enough, he can get the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.”
In other Trump legal news, the special counsel looking into the events of January 6 issued subpoenas for Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner. “I don’t know what the point of subpoenaing Ivanka is – you know she is just going to plead the Saks Fifth,” Kimmel quipped.
“And serving Jared raises some important and interesting legal questions like, can you subpoena a mannequin?” he added.
Meanwhile, the former president was, as Kimmel put it, “trying to exploit” the disaster in East Palestine. On Wednesday, he dropped off crates of Trump-branded bottled water, and faced tough questions for his administration’s rollback in 2018 of a rule that would have required better braking systems on trains carrying hazardous materials.
“So now dummy, who could’ve stayed out of this whole thing, is being held responsible for making safety last,” Kimmel explained. “But fortunately for him, he’s got an ardent defender in one Donald J Jr.”
Appearing virtually on Fox News, the Trump’s eldest son complained about Pete Buttigieg: “There is no accountability. There’s not even expectation of these guys doing their jobs.
“And what is your job exactly?” Kimmel fumed. “I mean, seriously, besides yelling at your laptop, what is it that you do for a living? What do you write on your tax returns? ‘Son’? Donald Trump Jr is the only guy who claims himself as a dependent.”
