Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump potentially going to jail for another gag order violation and even more strange excerpts from Kristi Noem’s book.
Stephen Colbert
Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial resumed in New York on Monday, and “in a twist no one saw coming, he remained conscious”, joked Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.
Judge Juan Merchan held once again held Trump in contempt of court for violating his gag order barring him from speaking publicly about the case. “Again? I’ve got deja woohoo,” said Colbert.
This marks Trump’s 10th violation of the gag order; one more, and the judge said he would have to consider a jail sanction, drawing cheers from Colbert’s audience. “Donald Trump could go to Rikers Island,” he said. “My condolences to whatever prison guard has to conduct the cavity search. Wear a headlamp.”
At a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, Trump paraded some of his potential running mate picks on stage, commenting on both their strengths and weaknesses. “He’s picking his vice-president Bachelor-style,” Colbert remarked before breaking out his Trump impression: “I really enjoyed our one-on-one time in the fantasy Oval Office, Marco Rubio. Will you accept this noose?”
One likely also-ran for the job is the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, who triggered backlash last week for the admission in her memoir that she killed her puppy Cricket for being disobedient. Further excerpts from her book “don’t make her look less like Cruella De Vil”, said Colbert.
In a later chapter, Noem talks about Joe Biden’s German shepherd, Commander, who has a history of biting Secret Service agents. Noem said if she were president, “the first thing I’d do is make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds (Commander, say hello to Cricket for me)”.
“That’s your ‘if I was president’ fantasy?” Colbert exclaimed. “What happens if she finds a genie’s lamp? ‘Three wishes? I guess kill a dog, kill a dog and time machine so I could go back and kill Hitler’s dog.’”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Trump for complaining about the room temperature during his New York criminal trial. “Is Joe Biden old? Sure. But if you’re complaining about the temperature at your criminal trial, you are too old to be president,” he said. “And too criminal!
“Also, it can’t be that cold if you keep dozing off,” he added. “They’re probably worried if they raise the thermostat one degree, you’ll just go into a coma.
“The judge threatened to throw Trump in jail while also acknowledging he could be the next president of the United States,” Meyers said of Monday’s events. “That is a fucked-up wild series of words. But we’re somehow accustomed to it. I guarantee when most people saw that headline, they just scrolled past it on their phone.
“Yet despite the fact that Trump could very well end up in jail after or even before the election, Maga Republicans are still falling all over themselves to suck up to him in order to become his vice-president, even though on top of being a criminal and aspiring dictator, Trump almost got the last guy who had that job killed,” he continued.
One of those Republicans is the Ohio senator JD Vance, who claimed on CNN that Pence was never in danger on January 6: “Did a few people say some bad things? Sure, but do we blame Donald Trump for every bad thing that’s ever been said by a participant in American democracy?”
“No, you can’t blame Donald Trump for every bad thing everyone says ever, but you can blame him for the bad things people say when he told them those were the right things to say,” said Meyers. “Another thing to blame him for? Not picking up his phone mid-riot and saying, ‘Hey actually gang, don’t hang Mike Pence.’”
Jimmy Kimmel
Trump has already paid $9,000 for his previous nine gag order violation fines, “which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is a lot for Eric, who now won’t be getting his allowance this week”, said Jimmy Kimmel.
Merchan threatened Trump with jail time for further violations, “which means Trump is definitely going to jail,” said Kimmel, “because he can’t stop talking about the case. It’s like trying to get a dog to stop licking himself.
“How would that even work?” he wondered. “Like, would they give him a cavity search? God help whoever gets that gig. They might find Vivek Ramaswamy living up there.”
The jail threat means “this is getting real”, he concluded. “They still haven’t figured out what to do about the Secret Service if they have to lock him up. They might have to go to prison too. Could you imagine that? You work your whole life to become a Secret Service agent assigned to protecting the president of the United States, somehow you end up doing 12-hour shifts in a prison cell with Count Flatula.”
