Stephen Colbert
Late-night hosts lapped up details of financial misconduct by the Trump family on Wednesday evening, a day after the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, told a court that its investigators uncovered a pattern of “fraudulent or misleading” business practices at the family company. “That’s believable,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It’s certainly more believable than a pattern of business at the former president’s fraud.”
James filed the motion in response to Donald Trump’s attempts to block her from questioning him and two of his children, Don Jr and Ivanka, under oath.
“Lord, please make that happen,” said Colbert. “I don’t ask for much, and I don’t ask often. All I want before I die is to see Don Jr swear in on a jar of hair gel. It’s the only thing he believes in.”
According to the filing, James’s team found significant evidence that Trump fraudulently valued multiple assets, including his private residence in Manhattan; Trump claimed the triplex apartment was 30,000 sq feet in size, when in fact the actual size was just under 11,000 sq feet. “Yeah, that’s not a surprise – he’s known for falsely tripling the size of his assets,” Colbert remarked. “He once told Stormy Daniels his penis was three inches.”
Trevor Noah
Trump’s being investigated for fraud because he inflated the value of an apartment… by 200 million dollars. pic.twitter.com/5lGAtn9PoY
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 20, 2022
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah also reacted to the allegation that Trump overstated the valuation of his New York apartment by over $200m. “No, Donald, no! You can’t exaggerate your apartment’s value by $200m!” Noah said, feigning concern. “I mean, I’d get it if it’s an NFT, but this is an apartment, my friend!
“Donald Trump does not give a fuck, let’s be honest,” he continued. “This dude will brag about himself even if it gets him in trouble. I bet if a cop asks him how fast he was going, he was like, ‘yeah, I do 400bn miles a second, the fastest anyone has ever gone, I was so fast. So fast, you want to test it again?’”
But though there’s plenty about the former president to mock, “I can’t get mad at him for this,” Noah conceded. “Because deep down, he’s just a landlord, and this is what every landlord in New York does. They’ll say an apartment has three bedrooms, then you get there and two of the bedrooms are somehow in the kitchen, but it’s still the best deal for your budget, so you sleep in your dishwasher. It is what it is.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“The walls appear to be closing in on Trump,” said Jimmy Kimmel. “Big, beautiful walls. Mexico’s like, ‘Let us know if you need us to chip in with that, muchachos.’
“Who could’ve ever predicted? I mean, of all things, fraud?” he joked, riffing through old news reports of the family’s numerous fraudulent schemes over decades, from Trump university to his father’s real estate business.
“It’s a fairly straightforward case,” he concluded. “To find fraud in a business, you just have to look for the signs, particularly the signs at the top of the building that say Trump on them. And you will find it there. There is where you will find his male-pattern fraudness.”
In other bad news for the the former president, the House select committee for the January 6 attack on the Capitol subpoenaed four of his former advisers this week, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “Which is unnecessary – all they need to do is say his name three times in the mirror and he will appear,” Kimmel joked. “And even if he does show up to answer questions from the committee, he’s just going to lie. That’s just what he does. He’s a liar. He lies about things he doesn’t even need to lie about.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers tore into Giuliani’s subpoena for his role in spreading election lies and fomenting the January 6 insurrection. “I’ll never get over the fact that that guy, who sounds like the guy who sprays the shoes at the bowling alley … that guy was once crowned ‘America’s Mayor’ on magazine covers and became the personal attorney to the president of the United States,” Meyers mused.
“Rudy is what happens when a scientist accidentally splices the DNA of a fruit bat and Mr Bean, and yet somehow he ended up working for the most powerful person in the world.
“You imagine in your head that the president has all this power and information at their fingertips,” he continued. “They have 17 different intelligence agencies, the White House situation room, an army of government lawyers, and some of the richest, most powerful people in the world on their side, and yet Trump ended up with a Moleman who sweats like he’s the defendant.
“Trump told the guy to hold a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel, and he ended up at the Four Seasons Landscaping Company,” he added. “As a career comedy writer, I’ve got to tip my hat.”
