Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert opened Tuesday’s Late Show by acknowledging that “things are looking a little rough right now. The climate is on fire, democracy is hanging on by a pube, and just when we thought we couldn’t take another punch to the national gut, we’ve learned that Klondike’s Choco Taco has been discontinued.”
Unilever announced this week that the popular frozen dessert – a vanilla ice-cream core topped with chocolate and peanuts and wrapped in a sugar cone-like shell that, yes, resembled a taco – would be discontinued after nearly 40 years.
“Not the Choco Taco! It was the only dessert with as much real beef as Taco Bell,” Colbert quipped. “And may I point out, we learned this shocking news on a Taco Tuesday. That’s just salted caramel in the wound.”
According to a company spokesperson, the decision to end the Choco Taco, a staple of ice-cream trucks around the country, was due to increased demand for other Klondike products.
“Other Klondike products?” Colbert fumed. “Well, I guess the answer to ‘what would you do for a Klondike bar?’ is: ruin childhood.”
Colbert then turned to another scandal: the scheme by Trump allies in 2020 to install falsely appointed electors to the US electoral college in an attempt to overturn the results of the election. “Everybody’s been calling them fake electors because they were fake, and that’s a crime to have fake electors,” Colbert explained. “But surely the people who crimed the crime wouldn’t call them that, right? Because that’s proof that they knew their crime was a crime while they crimed it.”
In fact, the New York Times obtained emails from the plotters of the fake electors scheme, in which they repeatedly used the word “fake” to refer to the so-called electors. “That’s just straight-up saying it!” Colbert marveled. “You’re plotting the biggest crime in American history, you might want to use some code words.”
In a follow-up email, Phoenix-based lawyer Jack Wilenchik, who worked with the Trump campaign, wrote: “‘alternative’ votes is probably a better term than ‘fake’ votes” along with a smiley face emoji. “He realized he incriminated himself in an email, then he admitted it in the next email,” Colbert noted. “Shrug emoji, poop emoji, 4, brain emoji.”
Another of the plotters referred to the Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell as “Clita” and “Clavita” — “that’s a surprise, most Republican men can’t find the Clavita”, Colbert joked.
Trevor Noah
Russia is pulling out of the International Space Station, when all we asked them to do was pull out of Ukraine. Is this a Google translate issue? pic.twitter.com/43BC8nA531
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 27, 2022
Russia has officially pulled out of the International Space Station, “which no one asked them to do”, said Trevor Noah on the Daily Show. “We said pull out of Ukraine, not the space station! Is this is a Google Translate issue? What’s going on here?”
The decision, effective after 2024, is “actually bad news”, Noah continued, “because Russia helps to operate the space station”. Noah was surprised by this fact – “am I the only who’s shocked by how many things are connected to Russia in the world?” he wondered. “Like the world’s energy supply, Africa’s food supply, space travel, minerals for our electronics. Soon we’re going to find out that Russia provides the sound for sneezes and without them, we can’t complete the action.
“Although they think this is pretty cool,” he concluded, “good luck to them making a dramatic exit when there’s zero gravity.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers started with Joe Biden’s comment that he doesn’t think the US is entering a recession, “God willing.” “All right, well, ‘God willing’ kinda undercuts the first part,” Meyers said. “That’s like saying, ‘Of course I’m good to drive! God willing.’”
Biden also criticized Trump for his inaction during the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saying “you can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy.”
“Oh, that’s good, use logic on the insurrectionists,” Meyers said. “These are people who fly a Confederate flag and an American flag on the same pole.” One man, Jacob Chansley, who wore horns and carried a spear, “showed up to the coup dressed like a community college football mascot. You really think that guy heard what you said and thought, ‘Hmm, checkmate, Mr President.’”
Meyers turned to a Wall Street Journal report from the weekend that Elon Musk had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the estranged wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, causing Brin to cash out of his investments in Musk’s companies. “Musk broke the cardinal rule: don’t ever mess with a guy who knows how to check your Gmail,” said Meyers.
