Late-night hosts discussed Joe Biden’s meeting with Donald Trump and Trump’s announcement of Matt Gaetz as attorney general and Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense.
Seth Meyers
Barely a week after the election, Joe Biden met with President-elect Donald Trump in the White House, where both men appeared confused before reporters. “I believe the one thing these two old-ass dudes can agree on is that they can’t understand a word you’re saying,” laughed Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night. “The press is treating this like the Beatles landing at JFK but to them, it sounds like a plane taking off at JFK.”
Trump “attempted to be normal, but still made it a little weird”, said Meyers. The president-elect, seated next to Biden, told the press: “Politics is tough and it is in many cases not a nice world but it is a nice world today and I appreciate it very much.”
“It is unnerving watching Trump try to behave,” said Meyers. “It’s like watching the neighborhood bulldog who’s always terrorizing mailmen mope around with a surgery cone.”
For his part, Biden promised Trump that his administration would “do everything we can” to accommodate the transition of power. “Or don’t!” Meyers suggested. “I mean, you correctly called him a criminal fascist and threat to democracy. I’m not saying booby-trap the place, but you don’t have to be overly helpful. I mean, how are you going to accommodate him, anyway? Update all the toilets so they can handle more classified documents? Restock the fridge in Stephen Miller’s office with mice?”
Meanwhile, Trump has announced a “Pandora’s cabinet of goblins and weirdos” and is going to “stick them on the government like a bunch of ferrets on ketamine”, Meyers lamented.
This includes the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a former army national guard member who is Trump’s pick for secretary of defense. To summarize Hegseth’s qualifications, Meyers played a 2015 video of Hegseth throwing an axe outside Fox studios, clearing the target and accidentally hitting a civilian. “Why are you throwing an axe near people in midtown Manhattan?!” Meyers exclaimed. “Saying yes to that takes the same kind of unearned confidence it takes to say yes to being secretary of defense with zero government experience.”
Stephen Colbert
Eight days since the election, “I’ve been saying, quite sincerely, hey, let’s not get out over our skis here,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Let’s take this one day at a time. Maybe, maybe, betting against all logic and previous experience, it will be different this time.
“I was right. Because it’s already way worse,” he continued, especially as Trump announced on Truth Social that he was nominating Matt Gaetz to be attorney general of the United States. “During the campaign, I thought if Trump won, he would do the worst things I could imagine,” said Colbert. “Turns out, I don’t have much of an imagination. There is not enough Botox in the world to hide how shocked I am. There is also not enough Botox in the world because Matt Gaetz used all of it.
“What a horrifying idea this is,” he added. “Matt Gaetz, nominated for the top law enforcement office in the United States, is currently under investigation by a House ethics panel that issued a subpoena for him in a sex and drugs probe. When you hear that, it really makes you wonder: did he bring enough drugs to share? Because I could really use them right about now.”
Trump also named Tulsi Gabbard director of national intelligence. Colbert, who interviewed Gabbard during her 2020 presidential run, said: “When I think Tulsi Gabbard, the word ‘intelligence’ is not the first one that comes to mind. Or the second.”
Gabbard has spread Russian propaganda on fringe far-right sites, to the point that Hillary Clinton said Russia was “grooming” her. “But only because she’s too old to be groomed by Matt Gaetz,” Colbert quipped.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel recapped Trump’s meeting with Biden. “It was so weird seeing Trump back in the White House,” he said. “It’s like if there was a sequel to Snakes on a Plane, but this time the plane was all snakes.”
Biden and Trump met for about two hours, with each promising reporters a “smooth” transition. “Just me, or did that sound like two guys talking about their bowel movements there?” Kimmel wondered.
“When you see Donald Trump sitting in front of a portrait of George Washington, you realize how ridiculous this whole thing is,” he added.
Kimmel also touched on some of Trump’s administration picks, including Gabbard for director of national intelligence, “which is a big job”, he said. “It could interfere with her other job, working for Russian national intelligence.”
And he had special ire for Gaetz, who remains under investigation for the alleged sex trafficking of a minor. “You know, at a lot of jobs, being investigated for sex-trafficking underage girls would hurt your chance for advancement,” he said. “But in the Trump administration, you can list it on your résumé under ‘special skills’.
“What a team he’s putting together,” he concluded. “It’s the legion of dumb.”
