Stephen Colbert
For the second evening in a row, late-night hosts focused on the arrest and arraignment of Donald Trump on Tuesday for 34 counts of falsifying business records. “You know what? I’m not sure if that’s fair. Business fraud is his brand,” Stephen Colbert joked on Thursday’s Late Show.
After his arraignment, Trump “hauled his ass to LaGuardia, got on his private jet, and flew to Mar-a-Lago, where he held an angry rally for all his cult members”, Colbert noted. The Florida event began with a “truly weird” procession down the center aisle by Trump’s children and far-right Republican lawmakers Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. “They look like the prom court, if the theme was Enchantment Under Arrest,” Colbert quipped.
Trump’s speech included a six-minute list of grievances. “Well, come on, what do you expect? You’re listening to a 76-year-old man in Florida,” Colbert joked.
The former president also blasted the New York judge overseeing the case, claiming he’s “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife”.
“Well, at least that’s one thing you and the judge have in common,” Colbert responded.
Though he was arrested, Trump did not have to pose for a mug shot, though that did not stop his campaign from mocking one up and selling it on T-shirts emblazoned with the words “not guilty”.
“OK, but if he’s not guilty, why did you put him in a mugshot?” Colbert wondered. “Just make a poster that says, ‘WANTED for following too many laws.’”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers reacted to claims from within Trump’s camp that the ex-president was enjoying the arrest process. “The only way you could possibly find the experience of getting arrested fun is if everything about your life is absolutely miserable, which I guess applies to Donald Trump,” Meyers mused.
“Here’s one thing I can tell you just as an outside observer who has watched Donald Trump for many years now: the man is not have fun,” he added. “For one thing, he wasn’t paraded around by authorities; he moped through the hallways of the criminal courthouse surrounded by officers who didn’t even hold the door open for him.
“That’s probably the first time in his life he’s had to do that,” he continued. “If Trump walked up to a door without anyone else around to help, he’d be totally stumped.
“This is all part of the shtick: Trump wants us to think everything he does is by design, that’s it all part of his master plan, that he’s playing four-dimensional chess and he’s always getting the best of us, and he’s loving every minute of it. But that’s not true.
“He’s used to sitting with kings and CEOs,” he continued, “and now he’s sitting in a chair that five minutes before he walked in was used by a guy who pled not guilty to exposing himself to a squirrel in Central Park.”
Meyers pointed to the importance of a now widely circulated photo from inside the court house, showing Trump seated before a judge. “It shows that even the guy who was not too long ago the most powerful man in the world, the guy who controlled our nuclear arsenal and rolled around in a presidential limo and entered every room to Hail to the Chief, had to sit in that courthouse in front of a judge, just like everyone else accused of breaking the law,” he said. “In fact, if you ask me, they should’ve made it a real New York experience and towed his plane while he was inside.”
The Daily Show
Who do you know that goes to trial and talk s**t about the judge? pic.twitter.com/dsbDVVQxNy
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 6, 2023
And on the Daily Show, guest host Roy Wood Jr laughed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech, in which he called the New York district attorney a “criminal”, and said the judge was “Trump-hating” with a “Trump-hating wife and family”.
“Who do you know go to trial and talk shit about the judge? That’s bold,” said Wood. “The judge could destroy you, and you’re riling him up. If you’re about to fight Cocaine Bear, you don’t offer him crack first.
“And he didn’t just go after the judge; Trump called out the kids,” he continued. “And you don’t pull the kids into it. Even rappers don’t go after the kids, and they murder each other.”
Wood also homed in on Trump saying the judge had a “Trump-hating wife”. “To be fair,” said Wood, “I don’t even know if that was insult, because Donald Trump also has a Trump-hating wife.”
