Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert was “still digesting yesterday’s bombshell” that was the second of the House select committee’s public hearings on the events of 6 January 2021. The hearing on Monday included evidence that Donald Trump scammed his followers out of $250m with his “Official Election Defense Fund” to fight fictional voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“Surprise, surprise, the committee discovered the whole thing was a grift,” the Late Show host said. “So he duped $250m from his most passionate supporters, then watched as they all go to prison while he sat at Mar-a-Lago double-fisting coconut shrimp.
“And these aren’t wealthy people! You can always tell, because they’re wearing nothing but giveaway merch from the losing team,” he said over a photo of Capitol rioters decked in Maga gear.
According to the committee, $1m of the “election defense fund” was donated to the personal foundation of Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. “Yes, the Meadows foundation is a charity that raises money to fund research into how much money it can raise,” Colbert joked.
Another $200,000 went to the former president’s hotels, “and that was just Giuliani’s bar tab”, Colbert quipped. And the former Fox News anchor turned Don Jr paramour Kimberly Guilfoyle was paid $60,000 for her two-minute speech at Trump’s January 6 rally. “But it was worth every dime,” Colbert deadpanned. “I’ll never forget her immortal words: ‘Yaaahhghaahheetahaaaghhh!!’”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers noted a speech by Joe Biden in which he lamented that ExxonMobil “made more money than God last year” – “worse, they made it by selling a natural resource,” said Meyers, “so that’s technically God’s money.”
Meyers then turned to the committee hearings, starting with Representative Liz Cheney’s assessment that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was “apparently inebriated” when advising the former president on election night. “To be fair, his legal advice doesn’t get any better when he’s sober,” Meyers said.
Meyers also noted Kimberly Guilfoyle’s $60,000 payment for a two-minute speech. “Well, technically $20,000 to speak and then $40,000 to please stop,” he joked.
And the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appeared on an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars – “either that or she didn’t, and that person should win”, said Meyers.
Jimmy Fallon
A recent poll found that the biggest drop in support for Biden was among young voters, “although to Biden, I’m pretty sure a young voter is just a voter”, Jimmy Fallon joked on the Tonight Show. “Then Biden said ‘OK, so this means I’m doing OK with older voters?’ and his staff was like, ‘oh goodness, no.’”
The White House is considering a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax. “Take your time, gang,” Fallon deadpanned. “You can tell the president is on the older side when he’s like ‘why don’t we give everyone a quarter?’”
And the stock market is in its biggest freefall since the start of the pandemic. “Right now the ticker on CNBC is just showing the lyrics to Everybody Hurts,” Fallon said.
Finally, there was a new Guinness world record set for largest chicken nugget, which involved 40 pounds of ground chicken, 20 slices of white bread and 40 eggs. “At that point, they’re really taking liberty with the word nugget,” said Fallon. “They made a chicken cake.”
