Seth Meyers
Late-night hosts found plenty to mock in congressional Republicans’ vote to pursue an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite any evidence of a crime.
“Trump and his goons are finally facing consequences for their shameless lying, which explains why Republicans decided to waste Congress’s precious time on a sham impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden,” said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night. “It has nothing to do with the facts, they just want to give Trump political ammunition to use against Biden.”
“And that’s not just me saying that,” he added. “That’s coming from Trump and his GOP allies.”
Meyers pointed to the Republican Troy Nehls, who said he wanted to give Trump “a little bit of ammo to fire back” at Biden on the campaign trail. Trump himself has said that Republicans wouldn’t impeach if Democrats hadn’t impeached him.
“This impeachment inquiry is such a scam, even news anchors are openly laughing in the faces of Republicans overseeing the investigation,” said Meyers. CNN’s Jake Tapper couldn’t help but laugh at the Kentucky Republican James Comer, who claimed that the Biden justice department’s indictment of his son Hunter was actually a conspiracy to protect him. Even Fox News’s Steve Doocy said Republicans “have not shown where Joe Biden has done anything illegally”.
The congressional Republicans pursuing the inquiry are “such nutballs they don’t even hear how dumb they sound,” said Meyers. “They spent years obsessing over Hunter Biden and you know what? He’s been indicted. Indicted under the Biden administration! He’s the president’s son and he’s still facing legal repercussions for his actions.
“If anything, that should prove that the criminal justice system is working,” he concluded. “Instead, Republicans think the indictments are somehow a conspiracy to help Hunter, which is obviously ludicrous.”
Stephen Colbert
“House Republicans who support the impeachment insist that launching an impeachment investigation into a crime with no evidence is totally normal,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, pointing to comments from the Texas representative Pat Fallon, who compared the impeachment inquiry to the 26 months of the Watergate investigation.
“Right, Watergate started with a burglary and it took them 26 months to find out it went all the way to Richard Nixon,” said Colbert. “This started with you not liking Joe Biden, and spending a year not finding a crime he committed.”
“It’s just like an episode of Law & Order – ‘In the criminal justice system, sometimes you really want someone to have done something bad, even if they probably didn’t, so you spend many months and millions of taxpayer dollars on an investigation but the best you come up with is his son’s penis pics.’”
Republicans have focused their efforts on connecting Hunter Biden, who was indicted on tax charges, to his father. Hunter said he was willing to answer questions from Congress in an open session, “but if they did that, there would be no way for Republicans to go on Fox News later and lie about what Hunter said,” Colbert explained. So Republicans said no to cameras inside the hearing.
Instead, Hunter Biden told reporters outside Congress how Republicans had “impugned my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, my children, my family and my friends. They have ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father.”
“Come on, that’s not fair Hunter! They also did it to fundraise,” Colbert deadpanned.
Jimmy Kimmel
House Republicans “managed to get the votes they needed for this, even though no one seems to know exactly what they would be impeaching him for”, said Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel quoted a New York Times headline: “House set to approve Biden impeachment inquiry as it hunts for an offense.”
“In other words, they don’t have a crime, but they do have an investigation,” he said. “It’s like an episode of CSI, but if there was no C, just SI. It’s a scene investigation.”
Kimmel also mocked the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who said when Democrats were impeaching Trump: “You can’t impeach a president because you don’t like him, that’s not how this system works!”
Now, Johnson says we should follow the truth where it takes us, “which is also what he said to his teenage son when they decided to become porno accountability partners”, said Kimmel. “Look it up, it’s incredible.
“Johnson claims the inquiry is a legal decision, not a political decision, which is of course a lie,” he added. “They’ve presented no evidence of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden. You can’t impeach someone for falling asleep during Wheel of Fortune.”
