Late-night hosts talk the appointments of Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem to Donald Trump’s cabinet and Americans’ so-called “doom-spending”.
Stephen Colbert
A week after the election, Donald Trump has started naming his cabinet picks, and is expected to make Marco Rubio secretary of state. “This is actually kind of surprising,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Trump and Rubio, as you know, have a long and checkered history” dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
The two Republicans traded insults then, with Rubio at one point taking aim at Trump’s hand size: “He’s like six-two, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s five-two – and you know what they say about men with small hands.”
“They keep your balls in a jar on their desk?” Colbert jokingly answered.
What changed their relationship? “Rubio saw that people liked Trump more than they like him, so he set his lips on butt smooch,” said Colbert. That, and Trump noticed how enthusiastically Rubio hit the surrogate circuit and the campaign trail this year. “So even if you spend years insulting Donald Trump, you can get back in his good graces just by praising him,” Colbert noted. “Which is why I’d like to take this opportunity to say to our new president-elect: pass.”
In other cabinet news, Trump is also expected to make South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, his secretary of homeland security. “Which means DHS now stands for ‘Dogs, Hide, Shotgun!” Colbert quipped, referring to Noem’s much-maligned admission in her memoir that she killed her dog for behaving like a normal dog.
“I know, I know, it’s important not to focus on that one time Kristi Noem shot a dog,” Colbert said. “Because it’s also important to remember that she also shot and killed her family’s goat.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“We’re starting to get more of a sense of what season two of the Celebrity A-President might look like,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday evening. According to Trump’s new chief of staff Susie Wiles, Trump plans to issue several executive orders on his first day in office. “He wants four Big Macs, six large fries, two buckets of KFC,” Kimmel imagined.
More accurately, at least according to Wiles, Trump plans to issue orders severely curtailing immigration and efforts to fight the climate crisis. Wiles announced these plans at a three-day conference for the Rockbridge Network, a group “of rightwing money people cofounded by JD Vance that is focused on treating America as one big couch they can all screw together”, Kimmel explained.
Wiles also said Trump plans to keep holding rallies even though the campaign is over. “That way, Americans can stay up to date on the size of the late Arnold Palmer’s dong and whatnot,” said Kimmel.
The host also took aim at Noem’s appointment to the Department of Homeland Security. “One of his main messages during the campaign was about ‘killing the pets, they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats’, and he goes out and hires the woman who shot her puppy,” he said.
“Kristi Noem shouldn’t be in charge of a PetSmart, let alone homeland security,” he added.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers acknowledged the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments that the election results should be a “wake-up call” to Democrats for leaning too far left. “In fact, the only thing that’s less popular than far-left Democrats this election was Nikki Haley,” he said.
CNN published a report on Americans’ increase in so-called “doom-spending” to cope with stress. “Look at that! Not even in office yet and he’s already helping the economy,” Meyers joked of Trump.
A Disney cruise ship rescued four people over the weekend from a sinking catamaran off the coast of Bermuda. “‘We’re good,’ said the other nine people on the catamaran,” Meyers quipped.
And the FDA proposed ending the use of a common ingredient in most cold and allergy medicines, including Nyquil, Benadryl and Sudafed. “Or as Trump calls them: ‘My three top advisers,’” Meyers joked.
