Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers looked at the burgeoning rivalry between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis on Monday’s Late Night, after reports emerged of Trump’s new nickname for the Florida governor: “Meatball Ron.”
“Personally, I think is the best option so far,” said Meyers. “I mean, why keep digging when you strike gold? I can’t believe I’m saying this to Donald Trump of all people, but don’t overthink it.”
Trump is reportedly still trying out other nicknames, such as “Ron DisHonest”, “Ron DeEstablishment” and “Tiny D”.
“I think we have our fucking winner: Tiny D,” Meyers laughed. “I bet when Trump finally comes up with a right nickname for someone, white smoke comes out of the Mar-a-Lago chimney like when they elect a new pope.”
DeSantis notably skipped last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC, during which Trump attempted to gin up support for his 2024 presidential run. Among the efforts was a speech by his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, to a half-empty room.
“Wow, that looks less like an audience and more like the tour group at a spoon museum on a Tuesday morning,” Meyers said. “I’ve seen middle school dance recitals with a bigger audience. He looks like he’s doing an off-Broadway one-man show called The Real Cocaine Bear.”
The conference was “a window into the unhinged nature of the modern conservative worldview”, Meyers summarized. “They’re all in a little echo chamber screaming to half-empty conference rooms about made-up bullshit most normal people don’t care about.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also recapped the under-attended CPAC. “Turns out CPAC actually stands for ‘crazy to put up all those chairs’,” he joked.
Trump “used his speech to re-relaunch his 2024 campaign”, he explained, “and it got real creepy real fast”.
For example, he pretended that his border wall was dismantled – “They took it away … they actually took it away and they hid it, they put it in a hiding area.”
“Yes, they hid it. In a hiding area,” Colbert deadpanned. “Where is that, you ask? Well maybe you can find it in the new Maga kids books Where Wall Go?”
Trump also proposed “new bonuses for a baby boom”, explained as: “I wanna baby boom. Oh you men are so lucky out there, you’re so lucky.”
“What? Wait, lucky because sex? Does he think wives only have sex with their husbands if there’s money in- oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Colbert joked.
And he said he wanted to invest in flying cars. “Are his policies being written by an eight-year-old?” Colbert laughed.
Meanwhile, one of Trump’s few declared rivals for the Republican nomination, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, doubled down on her culture war rhetoric, saying: “Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.”
“Yes, wokeness is such a dangerous virus that it apparently killed two-thirds of her audience,” Colbert quipped.
The Daily Show
The best comedy special from this weekend? CPAC. @MarlonWayans pic.twitter.com/lvrDkHAjpv
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 7, 2023
And on the Daily Show, guest host Marlon Wayans mocked “the funniest comedy special last week” – CPAC, “or as I like to call it, Crazy White People”.
Wayans described the far-right gathering as “an annual event where all the Karens and their husbands come together to complain about the rest of us. The Karens and the Darrens”.
Wayans played a string of risible clips from the weekend, including one of Donald Trump Jr instructing his audience to look under their chairs for a “gold chocolate bar” that would contain a VIP ticket to his father’s reception at CPAC.
“What the fuck is with his fingers?” Wayans wondered, mocking Trump’s hand movements. “Why does he have hot dog fingers from Everything Everywhere All At Once?
“It looks like 10 limp dicks playing piano,” he continued. “I like how Donald Jr is always like, ‘Democrats are pedophiles. Anyway, if you come with me, I’ll give you chocolate, shh.’”
