Stephen Colbert
Late-night hosts had a bevy of Donald Trump legal developments to process, starting with his federal trial for inciting the January 6 insurrection, in which he faces 91 felony charges. Trump’s lawyers have tried to avoid a trial by claiming that he has complete immunity from criminal prosecution for any alleged crimes committed in office. “Come on, the president can’t be free to commit any crime they want in office,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show.
The judge in that case ruled against Trump, but his lawyers appealed the ruling, which could delay the trial indefinitely. Enter the special counsel Jack Smith, who on Monday asked the supreme court to decide on whether Trump has any immunity from criminal prosecution. “He wants to completely skip the appeals process,” Colbert explained. “It’s the legal equivalent of being on hold with the cable company and going ‘representative! representative!’
“Trump better hope he has immunity, because it sounds like Smith has a whole lot of evidence,” he continued, such as extracted and reviewed data from Trump’s phone. “Can you imagine being the witness who has to go through all of the data on Donald Trump’s phone?” Colbert mused.
The data reportedly reveals details of Trump’s final weeks in office, including his daily movements and Twitter habits. “And we all know his Twitter habits happen in the same room as his daily movements,” Colbert quipped.
The prosecution also sought to review Trump’s direct messages and draft tweets. “Wait a second, he has drafts of his tweets?” Colbert wondered. “What could he possibly have typed that he wasn’t willing to immediately hit send on?”
In other news, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was fired from the network in April “for somehow being too racist”, and started a show on Twitter, but now has “an even worse idea”: a subscription streaming service. Membership to Tucker Carlson Network will cost $9 a month. “Now, that seems steep, but there is a free version,” Colbert noted. “For $0 a month, you can never watch Tucker Carlson again.”
According to the website, the network will include interviews with such figures as Kid Rock, Martin Shkreli, Alex Jones and RFK Jr, “collectively known as Mount Douchemore”, Colbert quipped.
Jimmy Kimmel
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was in Washington DC on Tuesday to visit Joe Biden for support in the war against the Russian invasion. “This poor guy Zelenskiy is fighting for his life, he has to come here and beg these idiots for money,” Jimmy Kimmel noted.
Zelenskiy also stopped by the Capitol to meet with Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell. “What a threesome,” said Kimmel of the photo-op. “It’s like an elderly same-sex couple showing their nephew around the country club.”
Zelenskiy met with all 100 US senators on Tuesday to ask for additional funding for Ukraine and more humanitarian aid “and to show Ted Cruz how to grow a beard”, Kimmel quipped.
The former president, meanwhile, was busy shilling his official trading cards, including some with his mugshot. “What is going on? This genius just reinvented Garbage Pail Kids,” Kimmel remarked.
“He is the most shameless person in the history of the world, probably,” he added. “By summer, you’ll probably be able to buy his adult diapers out of a vending machine.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers addressed an apparent gaffe by Biden, when he accidentally referred to the Marine One presidential helicopter as “Air Force Helicopter One”.
“You know what? I don’t even think that’s a gaffe,” said Meyers. “I think once you get to a certain age, you don’t care what stuff is called any more. It’s the same reason your dad calls Yellowstone ‘Yellowranch’. He doesn’t care!”
Meyers also noted Zelenskiy’s meeting with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, before going to the White House to speak with Biden, “because in America it’s customary to go ask Dad when Mom says no”.
On the Trump front, new evidence shows that the former president contacted a Mar-a-Lago employee who witnessed multiple incidents of his handling of classified documents and offered the worker legal representation and free tickets to an upcoming golf tournament. “Man, only Trump is lazy enough to bribe a witness with stuff he just has lying around,” Meyers laughed.
And a new poll found that one in five registered voters said they would be open to supporting the presidential hopeful and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr, “and if Kennedy could just talk to some of those people, he could get it to one in 10”, Meyers joked.
