Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in a hush-money plot to influence the 2016 election and his claim that he never advocated for Hillary Clinton to be jailed.
The Daily Show
Returning to his Monday night guest hosting slot for The Daily Show, Jon Stewart relished Donald Trump’s conviction last week on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, but had harsh words for media coverage of the more than month-long trial.
“Maybe our justice system wasn’t a sham, but certainly applying our justice system to Donald Trump was,” he said of the media’s weaponization of the court system.
Stewart had special vitriol for the conservative media sphere who peddled stories about a “witch-hunt”. “To admit their own political gamesmanship, their own attempts at weaponizing justice, their own relentless pursuit of opponents, their own dehumanizing rhetoric towards the left would be to allow a molecule of reality into the airtight distortion field that has been created to protect Magadonians from the harsh glare of actuality,” he fumed. “It is a place where a moment such as this next one can pass without so much as a gasp of ‘What planet do you live on?’ For it’s clearly not ours.”
For Democrats, the verdict was “an exercise in concealed and controlled glee”, Stewart added, noting that the party’s challenge now was to “exploit the moment politically without giving the impression that this was the plan all along”.
Referring to Joe Biden’s press conference in which he found out the verdict in real time and smiled, Stewart simply had to ask: “Why does everything have to be so weird?
“The difference between in court and out of court is that, in court, someone can say ‘prove it,’” Stewart said. “And the problem is that most of the time in this country, our political leaders are not in court. They are here on TV, where the news media has decided that there’s really no such thing as reality.”
Stephen Colbert
“Tonight I feel good,” said Stephen Colbert on Monday’s Late Show, because Trump was found guilty and will be sentenced on 11 July. “That’s going to be a busy time for convicted felon Donald Trump,” he continued, as that’s four days before the start of the Republican national convention, and top Republicans are reportedly preparing for the possibility that Trump could be in prison when he accepts the nomination.
“It’s going to be the RNC live from Cell Block B with a keynote speech from his warden, his cellmate Spider, that one guard who smuggles in cellphones up his butt and, for the cocktail hour, enjoy complimentary toilet wine,” Colbert joked.
After the verdict, Trump had a “mini-meltdown” in the lobby of Trump Tower, saying: “It’s a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”
“It’s true, just think about that – if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone … who commits crimes!” Colbert joked. “No matter who they are! Do you realize, it doesn’t matter who you are! Just because there’s ample evidence and a jury believes it, anyone could now be found guilty. Do we really want to live in an America where the law is applied equally regardless of how rich you are?”
He added: “We might now be facing a situation where if you can’t do the time, and I can’t believe I’m saying this: don’t do the crime.”
Seth Meyers
“I can’t believe that we finally used that cue card” said Seth Meyers of Trump’s guilty verdict. The Late Night host yelled “not today!” for anyone who said Trump’s conviction wouldn’t make a difference. “You may very well be right, and it may make no difference at all, but you don’t get to talk about that today,” he said.
“If this strikes you as appropriate comeuppance for all the years Trump spent calling for his political opponents to be jailed, you’re not alone,” he added. “And Trump seems to be aware of that perception, which is why he’s now pretending that he actually never did that.”
In a new interview, Trump falsely claimed that he never said “lock her up”.
“That’s like Bart Simpson saying he never said ‘cowabunga’,” said Meyers, who played the evidence. “It really is amazing how all of Trump’s rally chants have come back to haunt him. ‘Lock her up,’ now he’s the one who could go to jail. ‘Build a wall,’ if he goes to jail he’ll be surrounded by walls. And even ‘four more years’ is perfect because if this is true, Trump could face probation or even four years in state prison on each count.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel checked in on Trump, who attended a UFC fight over the weekend before heading back to his home in Florida. “It’s good to see him out crossing state lines while he still can,” said Kimmel. “If I had just been found guilty of covering up a hush-money payment to a porn star, I wouldn’t be in a rush to get home to my wife either.”
Asked on Fox & Friends how Melania was doing, Trump said she was fine, “but she has to read all this crap!”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the only thing she reads is her prenup over and over again,” Kimmel joked. “It’s very rich that he’s mad at other people for that – ‘How dare you explain what I did to my wife!’”
Kimmel also mocked a new “heavily edited” Trump interview on Fox & Friends, in which Trump falsely claimed that he never said “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton. “Really? So interesting, because I remember you most certainly doing that,” Kimmel said before a montage of clips in which Trump said just that. “And not one of the three stooges interviewing him pushed back on that at all.”
