Late-night hosts talked gag order, hush money and who could possibly make an impartial jury for Donald Trump.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel relished more legal news about Donald Trump, after the former president sued the New York judge in his criminal hush-money case over a gag order preventing him from attacking the judge’s daughter online. “This sounds like something out of an episode of Seinfeld – there’s a gag order in the hush-money trial? Can you gag a hush? Oh you can gag a hush, for sure,” Kimmel joked.
According to USA Today, Trump was involved in 4,095 lawsuits before he was president. “That’s one lawsuit a day for 11 years,” Kimmel mused. “I say if you get sued more than 100 times in your life, we should send you to Guantánamo Bay, and that’s it. There should be a maximum.”
Trump has tried multiple ways to delay the hush-money trial, “which is what innocent people do, right?” said Kimmel. “It’s pure desperation. His team is down 15 points with two seconds left, and they’re still fouling in the game.”
In other Trump news, the Republican frontrunner said he does not support a federal abortion ban. “Trump believes that every woman should have the right to drive 600 miles for healthcare,” Kimmel quipped. The statement upset many of his supporters, including the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham and former vice-president Mike Pence, who called it a “slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020”.
Trump did not respond to Pence. “I think he’s scared of Mike Pence – he never responds. I think Mike Pence must know too much, is what’s happening there,” Kimmel speculated.
But Trump did take the opportunity to “blame” himself for Graham’s career. “This is a game they’re playing, because seven out of 10 Americans believe that women should have the right to choose, and Republicans are losing elections on this,” Kimmel explained. “So Trump is gonna be the good guy or the bad guy, depending on which side you’re on, and then Lindsey will be on the other side, fitting hissy, saying Trump was too lenient to calm the pro-church Republicans down.
“It’s like wrestling,” he added, “but with guys who, if you saw them in their underpants, you would throw up.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert celebrated a New York appeals judge’s denial of Trump’s 11th-hour request to delay the start of his hush-money criminal trial, which will commence on Monday in Manhattan.
Trump’s lawyers argued that he can’t get a fair trial in Manhattan, so the judge should postpone the trial indefinitely while they sought a new venue. “Nope!” Colbert chirped. “Sorry, it’s wedding rules: you put down the venue deposit, you’re getting married in a rusted barn. OK? That’s how it is.”
Trump’s lawyers also argued that the potential jury pool had been too polluted by news coverage of his other trials. “So are you saying that Trump’s jury can’t have seen any news about Donald Trump’s crimes?” Colbert wondered. “His crimes are the news! I don’t understand. Who would that possibly leave? ‘Your honor, it is only fair that our client be judged by an impartial jury who know nothing about the events in America over the last nine years! Might I recommend 12 confused men who were dropped off in a forest as infants and then raised by wolves or, if they’re not available, could we acquire some clone babies that have been rapidly aged in some sort of machine and then released into the jury box?”
In another “desperate stunt” to delay the trial, Trump also tried suing the judge. “Yes, it’s bizarro court!” Colbert exclaimed. “The defendant is suing the judge, the Bible is swearing on the plaintiff, the gavel is banging everyone!”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped Joe Biden’s plan to reduce student loan debt for 25 million borrowers. “In typical Democratic fashion, he did it during the eclipse,” said Meyers. “When are you going to announce universal healthcare? 11.59 on New Year’s Eve?”
After Trump announced he does not support a national abortion ban, Biden told supporters, “if they put one on his desk, he said he’d sign it.”
“Yeah, but that’s only because Trump is in permanent autograph mode,” said Meyers. “You could put a dead bird on his desk and he’d say, ‘Who should I make it out to?’”
As for Trump’s claim that the jury pool was too “biased” in Manhattan – “you were president! The whole country has a bias,” he exclaimed. “The only way you’re getting a juror who doesn’t know you if it it’s randomly Tiffany,” Trump’s largely unseen daughter.
And Meyers saved pointed critique for a New York Times piece titled “The Method Behind Trump Mistruths”. “Mistruths?! Why is it so hard for you guys to call him a liar,” he fumed. “I’m not sure your own spelling bee would take ‘mistruth’. You could just say Trump lied about something, and the world won’t end. You don’t have to say he ‘engaged in a quasi-deceptive part-factual utterance’. Just say lie. You can do it.”
