Stephen Colbert
Late-night hosts were still processing the chaos in the House of Representatives on Monday evening, as the latest potential speaker, Jim Jordan, failed again to win enough votes and withdrew his candidacy.
“I’m feeling good, partly because I’m back on my feet, but mostly because Jim Jordan will not be speaker of the House,” said Stephen Colbert during his return to the Late Show after a bout with Covid.
Jordan’s defeat was “an historic humiliation for a man who will not be in the history books”, said Colbert. “He was undone not by the usual Maga bomb throwers. He was brought low by a coalition of Republican moderates” nearly three weeks after the more extreme wing of the party ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker.
Eight Republicans are now vying for the top position in the House, and Republicans planned to hold a forum on Monday evening in which candidates would make their case in two-minute speeches. “Now, two minutes may seem short, but I know what I would say – ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the GOP, I am not Jim Jordan. I yield my time,’” Colbert quipped.
In other news, the former Trump attorney and election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell turned on the former president and pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy related to her role in helping to carry out a breach of voting equipment in a rural Georgia county. She will serve six years of probation. “So she’ll be able to go on with her own life, wake up in her own bed, have breakfast in her own kitchen and whisper to the coffee mug that the pancake griddle was taking orders from el cartel de los flapjacks,” Colbert joked.
Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers also looked into the associates turning on Trump, including attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and faces 100 hours of community service, five years of probation and a $5,000 fine. He must also truthfully testify against other co-defendants, including Trump.
Which is a problem for the ex-president, because, “when nutballs like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell get in trouble, it just feels like it’s part of the plan, like it’s been factored in,” the Late Night host said. “But when an anonymous, white-collar Harvard guy goes down and says he’ll cooperate with prosecutors, that’s gotta be when Trump is thinking to himself, ‘oh no.’
“Because if Mike Lindell or Rudy Giuliani ever flipped on Trump and told a jury Trump was guilty, Trump would be found innocent by the first lunch break, because they’re fucking nuts.”
Chesebro is “a Harvard-educated lawyer with a long history in Washington politics who might actually be able to explain to a jury where the bodies are buried”, Meyers added, “as opposed to Rudy, who looks like a guy who knows the best places to dig one up”.
In a measure of defense, Trump claimed he actually had nothing to do with Sidney Powell, writing in all caps on Truth Social: “Ms. Powell was not my attorney, and never was.”
“Obviously there are a couple problems with this claim,” the first being that Powell claimed under oath that she was in the Oval Office with Trump when he tried to name her as special counsel with security clearance to investigate the 2020 election. And in November 2020, Trump said publicly that Powell was his attorney in a tweet listing his “great” legal team. “It’s like Ocean’s Eleven if they were trying to give $160m to a casino,” Meyers joked.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel read online reactions to a photo of Taylor Swift kissing the Chiefs tight end and new beau Travis Kelce on the cheek after his game on Sunday, such as a tweet that said: “just killed myself”.
“Just perfectly normal reactions to a kiss on the cheek,” Kimmel deadpanned. “I wonder if Travis Kelce knows that if he ever tries to end this relationship, he’s dead. They’ll kill him. It’s the dating equivalent of asking the mafia to go in on a restaurant with you.”
There was still no speaker of the House on Monday, “and it isn’t likely that they will elect one soon”, he added. And there are now eight GOP candidates for the position – “seven white men and one Black man. Or, as Republicans call it, a very diverse slate of choices,” Kimmel joked. “It looks like the reunion of a college basketball team from 1955.”
As for Trump’s claim that Sidney Powell never worked for him – “The old ‘I didn’t even know her’ defense is back,” said Kimmel. “Works every time, except for the fact that Trump himself tweeted in 2020” that Powell was part of his “truly great” legal team. “We know she was on his legal team,” Kimmel continued. “She was right there standing next to Rudy on the day he had sideburn diarrhea. She was Trump’s lawyer.”
