Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert cheered the appointment of a new special counsel in the justice department’s investigations into Donald Trump, for potential crimes related to the January 6 Capitol attack and for his handling of classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago. The former president, meanwhile, said he was “not going to partake” in a possible indictment.
“I’m no lawyer, but I didn’t realize that was one of the options,” the Late Show host said. “The subject does not want to partake in the investigation – ‘your honor, while admittedly the prosecution does have overwhelming evidence of his guilt, my client pleads: not feeling it.’”
Over the weekend, Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated Trump’s account, which had been deactivated since January 6. “No, Elon, I won’t go back!” Colbert fumed. “The racism, the misspelling, the calls to violence, the dot dot dots. Remember the fucking covfefe? You know what? I am not going to partake in it.”
The billionaire CEO based his decision on a public Twitter poll, in which Trump’s reinstatement garnered a slim majority. “So Musk goes, based on a 1.8% majority in a completely made-up poll littered with bots, ‘I’m super cool reinstating a maniac whose last tweets celebrated a violent coup attempt on Capitol Hill,’” Colbert explained. “And in return for that complete moral debasement, the former president said: no thanks,” preferring instead to stick with his beleaguered social media venture Truth Social.
The host then turned to the World Cup held in Qatar, “a choice made by Fifa, which is, and I don’t want to overstate this, the most corrupt organization in the history of the world”.
According to the US justice department, Fifa allegedly awarded the tournament to Qatar, a desert country with extreme heat, following a series of bribes. “I’m sorry, I don’t care who hears me – I’m going to stand up here on national television and say that about Fifa every night,” he said, “unless it turns out that Fifa is a sponsor.”
Besides the heat, Qatar has an atrocious human rights record, from the persecution of LGBTQ+ people, severely curtailed rights for women and a system of forced labor by migrant workers. Fifa tried to paper over any controversy by assuring that “everyone is welcome” to the World Cup, though the Qatari government warned LGBTQ+ fans against “public displays of affection” and barred fans from being shirtless during matches or in public settings.
“No problem, I can’t imagine anyone at a soccer game would ever go shirtless,” Colbert deadpanned over a photo of a shirtless Lionel Messi.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers looked into the new special counsel appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to oversee investigations into Trump.
“If you’re keeping track at home, we’re now on our second special counsel looking into whether Donald Trump, a notoriously corrupt criminal authoritarian dipshit, broke any laws,” Meyers explained.
The new special counsel, Jack Smith, is “by all accounts and also by his name, a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails prosecutor who will follow the facts and not be intimidated,” said Meyers. “Which is the same thing they said about Robert Mueller. Which is cool, I guess, but where did that get us?
“I mean, Mueller outlined 10 different allegations of obstruction of justice, not to mention actual proof that Trump’s campaign openly encouraged foreign interference in the election, and then all Trump had to do was lean into the mic and say, ‘wrong,’ and that was it.”
Trump has already begun complaining about the appointment, lamenting the “egregiously corrupt” Biden administration and its “weaponized department of justice” during a speech at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.
The rambling address was aired but then dropped by C-Span. “Even C-Span cut away!” Meyers marveled. “This is the network famous for showing wide shots of empty chairs, and even they were like, ‘This shit is boring.’”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel mocked the former president’s response to the new special counsel appointee, Jack Smith, who “looks like a guy who would sentence Chewbacca to death”.
While hosting a gala for a conservative thinktank this weekend, Trump described himself as “one of the most honest and innocent people ever in our country”.
“You have to admit, that was funny,” Kimmel laughed.
Meanwhile, despite his reinstatement from Elon Musk, Trump has yet to return to Twitter. “You know how badly you have to screw up Twitter to make Donald Trump refuse to go on it?” Kimmel said.
Trump vowed he would not return – “which is a promise he’ll stick to until the next time he’s on the toilet for more than 20 minutes”, said Kimmel – but Kanye West is back following a similar reinstatement by Musk.
“Between Trump and Kanye coming back, it’s like Elon Musk did a reverse exorcism on us,” said Kimmel. “It’s like polio and measles returning at the same time.”
