Late-night hosts sorted through the many outlandish claims made by Donald Trump during his pre-inauguration press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Jimmy Kimmel
“Trump is already reminding us of what a terrible mistake we made,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday evening, after the president-elect held a 72-minute press conference at his Florida hotel that “covered all the issues, including his plan to rebrand the ocean itself”.
Trump, in fact, did propose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”.
“Yes, what a beautiful name he spent two seconds thinking of,” Kimmel deadpanned. “He still has no healthcare plan, stayed up almost all night drinking Diet Coke to come up with the Gulf of America. And from now on, tortillas will be known as ‘little round blankets’.”
The press conference, he added, “showed that the real gulf of America is the one between those who believe Trump belongs in the White House, and those who think he belongs in a hole”.
“For whatever reason, he loves terrorizing our allies,” Kimmel continued. “Putin? Good guy! Canada? He’s like Darth Vader – ‘come to the dark side, or else.’” And on Tuesday, Trump suggested that the US buy or just take over Greenland, even dispatching his son, Don Jr, to post on social media from the island.
“Who even thinks about buying Greenland?” Kimmel wondered. “Maybe he wants to buy Greenland so he can put Don Jr in charge and leave him there forever.”
Seth Meyers
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago press conference was “one of the most insane press conferences he’s ever had, tied for most insane with all the other press conferences he’s ever had”, said Seth Meyers. The Late Night host ran through Trump’s claims – among other things, that “special counsel Jack Smith executes people, Wayne Gretzky should run for prime minister of Canada, electric heaters make you itchy, faucets have no water. He said he’s going to rename the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America’ and he won’t rule out using the military to take over Greenland.
“My man is in mid-season form already,” he laughed. “If Trump were a sane human with a normal brain, he’d be taking a victory lap” after Congress certified the election results “without a liberal insurrection”.
Instead, Trump is vocally mad about a variety of things – the judge in his hush-money case, for one, and Biden, who banned oil and gas drilling on 625m coastal acres on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Trump’s explanation for his anger, somehow trying to figure out the math on such terrain, sounded like “an SAT math problem written by a dog who just smoked weed”, said Meyers.
Trump also refused to rule out using military force to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal. “I’m calling your bluff, bro – stop making these crazy promises. Do it, I want it, go get it!” Meyers joked.
“This is how you know Trump is not going to take on China,” he added. “He talked a big game, but now he’s backing down and threatening Greenland instead.”
Stephen Colbert
“Here at The Late Show, we have a self-imposed, ill-conceived mandate to every night talk about what people are talking about,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday evening. “The thing is, that was before Trump won re-election. After he won re-election, what people are talking about is that they don’t want to talk about what everybody’s talking about.”
Case in point: a new poll found that two-thirds of US adults are tuning out political news. “Which is just more proof that our politics is … something, I don’t know what. I’ve been tuning it out,” Colbert joked.
“Still, the guy who isn’t president yet is doing everything he can to capture our attention,” said Colbert before a clip of Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago, where he announced his plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s going to be a long four years,” said Colbert. “So now, if I understand this correctly, the Gulf of Mexico will become the Gulf of America, New Mexico will be Dry America and Cinco de Mayo will be the Fifth of mayo.”
