Stephen Colbert
There’s been some dark news lately, but “every once in awhile, there’s a little gleam of sunshine in the world: a child’s smile, the first flower of spring, the January 6 committee laying out potential criminal charges against the former president,” said Stephen Colbert to audience applause on Thursday night. “Turns out there is a chance that trying to violently overthrow our democracy might be illegal.”
The House select committee investigating the 6 January attack said in a major filing on Wednesday that it believed Donald Trump violated multiple federal laws to overturn the 2020 election.
“To paraphrase an idiot and his bloodthirsty mob: lock him up,” said Colbert.
The filing said that Jason Miller, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, told the committee in a deposition that Trump was well aware that his claims of a stolen election were false, because he had been told shortly after election day by a campaign data expert “in pretty blunt terms” that he was going to lose.
“How blunt?” Colbert wondered. “Because if the message was delivered via anything more complicated than scratch and sniff, I don’t think it’s going to get through.”
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel also celebrated potential criminal charges against Trump on Thursday evening, and mocked the former president’s limp denial released in a statement.
“He released that statement through a spokesperson, because his new billion-dollar social media platform that launched nine days ago still isn’t going,” Kimmel explained of Trump’s beleaguered social media startup, Truth Social.
“He posted there once, one day, and that’s it. This is the one that’s supposed to replace Twitter – even he’s not using it.
“In other waste of money news, you know that big, beautiful wall he almost partially built?” Kimmel said, noting it had been breached by smugglers over 3,000 times in the past three years because of a design flaw. “Basically Trump just installed a $15bn doggie door along the southern border.”
Kimmel also discussed reports that China requested Vladimir Putin delay his planned invasion of Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing. “How does that conversation even go?” he wondered. “Hey Vlad, I know you had your heart set on killing everyone around Valentine’s Day. Could you maybe hold off for a beat so we could bobsled?”
China has disputed the story as fake, “which is rich coming from a country with an official department of propaganda. China claiming fake news is like Beyond Beef claiming fake meat.”
Trevor Noah
It's great to see Ukraine's neighbors welcoming refugees with open arms. But it's worth taking a look at why refugees from Africa and the Middle East haven't received the same treatment. pic.twitter.com/1ebe5zqeqq
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 4, 2022
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah praised eastern European countries’ warm and welcome approach to over a million refugees from Ukraine but contrasted their compassionate treatment with the handling of migrants from Syria and North Africa, who were generally treated with scorn and distrust. In 2015, for example, Hungary put up a 13ft fence topped with barbed wire running 115 miles along its border with Serbia, and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, said: “Please don’t come.”
“When it’s Syrians who are fleeing a war, it’s all ‘we do not have space, do not come,’” Noah said. “But now there’s space and people must come? What changed? I mean, when the Syrians needed refuge, even the camera crew was drop-kicking families. But now the Ukrainians are getting accommodations, they’re getting visas, they’re getting work benefits – which, by the way, is good!
“We don’t even have to speculate” about the difference in treatment, he continued. The prime minister of Bulgaria said it last week about the Ukrainian refugees: “These are not the refugees we are used to … these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent, they are educated people …”
“I’m impressed that the prime minister of Bulgaria has found the time to get to know all 1 million refugees who have fled Ukraine in the past week,” Noah deadpanned. “He must be very efficient at making small talk.”
More seriously, Noah said he understood that European countries “have to think about how easy it is for refugees to integrate into their culture and society. I get that, I truly get that. It’s just like how it’s easier for you to take in a family member who’s in trouble than a random person who needs help.
“But it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And the problem I have is that when it’s Syrians, or Africans on a boat, these countries didn’t even try to integrate them,” he continued. “They reject even the chance that anyone brown could assimilate.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for scolding a group of high schoolers about wearing masks during a press conference. “Let’s just establish the facts here: DeSantis is obviously wrong and masks absolutely help control the spread of Covid,” Meyers said. “Studies have repeatedly proven that over and over again. And the better the mask, the better the protection.
“It won’t surprise you to learn that he was celebrated later that night by a host on Fox News, who thought that it was hilarious that he yelled at a bunch of teenagers who were trying to stay safe and do the right thing,” he added.
The Fox News host Laura Ingraham praised DeSantis, saying “someone has to tell these kids to push away all of the brainwashing that they’ve been subject to”.
“What kind of adult laughs at another adult yelling at a bunch of kids?” Meyers said. “If you’ve ever seen an 80s comedy, you know it’s the opposite. It’s funny when teens gets the best of adults.”
