Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s banter at Chick-fil-A, his delay tactics in court and Republican hypocrisy with outrage over Arizona’s abortion ban from 1864.
Jimmy Kimmel
From Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked forward to the start of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial next Monday in New York. “All his many efforts to delay it have failed,” he remarked on Thursday evening. “His only move left is to have sex with everyone in the court and pay them $130,000 to keep their mouths shut.”
Trump has lost three appeals in as many days to delay the trial. “He does this in every trial to gum up the mechanism. He keeps challenging and challenging, and it works,” Kimmel explained. “All these trials are behind schedule, and most won’t likely happen until after the election, if at all.
“Which, I don’t know, it seems like quite a lot of due process for a witch-hunt to me,” he continued. “It’s like, ‘We can’t burn this witch yet, her attorneys are saying the water we use to see if she floats wasn’t distilled.’
“But you know what they say: if at first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth or tenth you don’t succeed, cry, cry again.”
In other GOP news, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has reportedly started telling donors that he will fundraise for Trump, his former bitter rival in the Republican primary. “Which should be easy, given his natural magnetism and charm,” Kimmel deadpanned.
DeSantis “spent the better part of a year trashing Trump. Now he wants to raise money for him,” Kimmel explained. “And there’s actually a very good reason why: he’s a little bitch. It’s another chicken with his backbone removed.”
Seth Meyers
Amid all his legal troubles – Trump’s Save America Pac spent $230,000 a day on legal bills in February – the former president attempted to drum up popular support this week with a visit to a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta, where he bought 30 milkshakes and bantered with employees by asking if they were getting rich. “It’s like he’s never talked to normal human beings in his life,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night.
“If you ask me, they deserve to be rich,” he added. “Certainly richer than Donald Trump. And they deserve a raise for working that shift, because he for sure did not pay.”
Meyers also targeted fawning coverage of the stunt on Fox News, where one host argued: “This idea that Democrats try to sell that Trump is an awful human being, that he’s Adolf Hitler – I don’t know if Hitler was regularly buying journalists milkshakes or walking in Chick-fil-A or Dairy Queen like this.”
“I’m sorry, you don’t know that he didn’t? I know – he didn’t,” Meyers responded. “They say crazy shit all the time on Fox News but they’re not willing to go out on a limb to say for certain that Hitler didn’t buy milkshakes for journalists?
“What are you even talking about Hitler for?!” he continued. “No one else brought him up. Here’s a good rule for your life: you never want to be the first person in a conversation to bring up Hitler.”
The Daily Show
Arizona's anti-abortion law is being received as well as O.J. Simpson at the Pearly Gates. @michaelkosta pic.twitter.com/MiQSd7AmOq
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) April 12, 2024
And on The Daily Show, guest host Michael Kosta went in on the Arizona supreme court’s decision to uphold a near-total abortion ban first enacted in 1864, before Arizona was even a state. “This anti-abortion law is being received as well as OJ Simpson at the pearly gates,” Kosta joked, citing statements from several Republican lawmakers opposing the decision.
“Even far-right Republican Kari Lake hates it!” he said of the extremist Arizona Senate candidate. “And that can’t just be because she’s in a tight Senate race. Surely she’s always hated it, right?”
Kosta quoted Lake from less than two years ago: “I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books,” referring to the ban by its bill number.
“Have you ever loved a law so much that you memorized it?” Kosta wondered. “Even the person who wrote the law in 1864 would be like, ‘My lady, thou art a weirdo.’
“I’m pretty sure if you find Kari Lake’s iPhone, you’ll be able to unlock it,” he quipped.
Yet despite outcry even from anti-abortion Republicans, the same GOP lawmakers in Arizona voted down a measure to overturn the ruling. “You guys say you don’t want an insane abortion ban, but then you voted to keep it,” Kosta mused. “It’s almost like you’re just … totally full of shit.
“If Arizona women are going to be forced to live under this law from 1864, then all of Arizona’s lawmakers should be forced to get their healthcare from 1864 standards too,” he proposed. “You’ve got back pain? Put some leeches on it! Migraine? More leeches. Feeling depressed? You can see a therapist! Your therapist is a leech.”
