Stephen Colbert
Over a week out from the midterm elections, it’s now clear that Republicans have taken control of the House. “I know, it’s disappointing,” said Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Night, “though it’s nice to see Republicans take the House without any zip ties.”
The current House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, will lead a slim Republican majority, smaller than many projected before the midterms. “So it’s bad, but it’s not as bad you feared. It’s the political equivalent of Papa John’s,” Colbert joked.
McCarthy, a Trump acolyte from California, “has a horrible job where horrible people have the power to make him do horrible things”, said Colbert, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. The rightwing conspiracist congresswoman from Georgia endorsed McCarthy as speaker in exchange for “a lot of power and a lot of leeway” including committee appointments to investigate Democratic “traitors and criminals”.
“I can’t wait to see the investigation she launches,” Colbert deadpanned, mimicking her conspiratorial thinking: “What’s Hunter Biden’s wifi password? Who distributed spoons to the gazpacho police? Where does the water in my sponge go at night? Is it siphoned off to a secret Jewish space loofah?”
The outgoing House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, plans to take on an emeritus role to offer counsel to her colleagues. “Yes, she’ll remain a mentor to the younglings. She’s Obi-wan Pelosi,” Colbert quipped.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers noted Pelosi’s farewell to leadership positions in Congress with an address that name-checked three presidents she worked with, with a notable omission. “Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi – she knows what she’s doing,” said Meyers. “The worst thing you can do to Donald Trump is not say anything about Donald Trump.”
“The man desperately craves attention. He’d rather you call him a disgusting, degenerate criminal moron than not say his name,” he added. “And I’m sure he watched that speech, since he’s always watching TV.”
McCarthy’s term as speaker is “likely to be such a shitshow”, said Meyers, because “he has to answer to crazies” like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who promised in a speech this week to use committee positions to investigate Democrats.
“These are the kinds of bozos Trump surrounds himself with and now they will have a very tenuous hold on power in the House,” he continued, “which is bad for everyone, including Republicans themselves, because Trump’s handpicked slate of election denier candidates performed horribly in last week’s midterms” especially compared to more traditional Republican candidates.
McCarthy’s slim majority, he added, will “probably be led in large part by fringe extremists looking to cause chaos”.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel mocked Mike Pence’s book rollout, which included a town hall appearance on CNN. “I think he might be a robot,” said Kimmel. “I think someone built Donald Trump a robot vice-president and on the morning of January 6, he lost the remote control.”
In an event for his new memoir So Help Me God, Pence told CNN’s Jake Tapper that during the January 6 attack, he “prayed for God’s grace to meet that moment and that spirit” at the Capitol. “It wasn’t easy, and to be honest with you, I’m as human as the next guy.”
“Yep, definitely a robot,” said Kimmel. “Is the next guy a Ziploc bag filled with Miracle Whip? Because then I’m as human as he is.”
Now that Republicans control the House, “they’re getting right to work shifting focus from inflation and climate change and a woman’s right to choose to what Americans really care about: Hunter Biden’s laptop,” he deadpanned.
“The highly classified documents down in the Mar-a-Lago rumpus room? No problem,” he added. “Hunter’s crackhead photo stream? That we need to get to the bottom of right away.”
