The Daily Show host Michael Kosta has ridiculed Donald Trump’s latest false claim that the FBI was authorized to assassinate him when its agents raided his Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 in search of the classified documents he refused to return to the National Archives after leaving the White House.
The Republican presidential candidate made the complaint earlier this week, apparently having been egged on by Georgia GOP congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene, that the FBI had been permitted to use “lethal force” in executing the search warrant on his property.
Writing on Truth Social, Mr Trump declared: “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.
“NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE – 25TH AMENDMENT.”
The FBI quickly denied that this had been the case, writing in a statement: “The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.
“No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
Recapping the story using television news coverage, the late-night comedian repeated some of the key lines from the broadcasts in astonishment: “Holy s***! ‘Locked and loaded’? ‘Ready to take me out’? I’ve never heard Joe Biden sound so f***ing cool in my life!”
Mr Kosta continued: “I’ve always thought of Biden as a doddering old man but Donald Trump makes him look like one of The Expendables: ‘The rest of you take what you want, but leave the orange man to me. Can you tape Wheel of Fortune? This might take a while…”
He went on to say that he believed it would be difficult to assassinate Mr Trump in practice, “mostly because he would never get that close to a book depository”.
The comedian also expressed skepticism about the seriousness of the Republican’s concern given that he has already been sending out fundraising emails to his supporters off the back of it: “If you’re dodging bullets, you don’t stop to wave your Venmo QR code.”
He then cut to correspondent Josh Johnson, who claimed to be reporting live from the Biden campaign’s “Trump Assassination Room” and insisted: “Trump is 100 per cent correct. Biden has been trying to take him out for years!”
In addition to the FBI itself, the US attorney general Merrick Garland also took the rare step of directly refuting the candidate’s claim.
“That allegation is false and it is extremely dangerous,” Mr Garland said at a press conference in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
It was Mr Garland who approved the search of Mr Trump’s home before the appointment of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to handle the department’s prosecution of the former president in two separate cases.
“The document that is being referred to in the allegation is the Justice Department’s standard policy limiting the use of force,” Mr Garland continued.
“As the FBI advises, it is part of a standard operations plan for searches and, in fact, it was even used in the consensual search of President Biden’s home.”
