Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert turned his attention to the midterm elections, and with two weeks away, Democrats are pushing hard on the youth vote. The Late Show host pointed to an ad in which Barack Obama tried to relate to young voters: “I’ve heard a lot recently about how voting doesn’t solve everything, and I can see why you might think that. It won’t make Outer Banks or Euphoria season 3 or Rihanna’s new album drop any faster.”
“I love that man, but that has real youth pastor sitting in the chair backwards energy,” Colbert said, pulling out a mock chair – “Come on, guys, come on. Listen, listen you guys, I’m gonna yeet some truths your way. No cap. You know Archie from Riverdale wasn’t the only one to come back to life. Let me tell you about an influencer who got a lot of likes even though he only had 12 followers. Now everyone partake of his body-ody-ody.”
He also touched on Adidas’s decision to terminate its lucrative deal with Kanye West after the rapper’s numerous antisemitic comments. “So, no more shoe. If you want something as fashionable as Yeezys, you’ll have to microwave a Croc,” he joked.
“It’s about damn time Adidas did something,” he added, as “Kanye’s been calling them out.” In a recent podcast interview, West said: “I can say antisemitic things and Adidas can’t drop me, now what?”
“Now they dropped you,” Colbert responded.
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel dug into the “Trump tapes” released by journalist Bob Woodward. Over the course of his presidency, Trump called Woodward repeatedly at unexpected hours to talk “because there’s nothing he likes doing more than talking about himself”, Kimmel explained. “It’s his version of phone sex.
“Why are you agreeing to do 20 interviews on tape with the guy who took down Richard Nixon with tapes?” he wondered. “The emperor has no brain.”
Kimmel also addressed the end of Adidas’s partnership with Kanye, which was “terrible news for people who love shoes that look like severed alien feet”.
As the backlash against West grows – he’s been dropped by his agent, Vogue, Balenciaga, Adidas, and a studio has shelved a completed documentary about him – West seems to be doubling down by purchasing the rightwing social media app Parler.
“I’m interested to see how this will pan out for Parler – I mean, you really don’t want Kanye West to acquire you. It’s sort of like when Godzilla acquires Tokyo,” said Kimmel. “And the truth is, the right wing has a lot of different sites to post on besides Parler already. There’s Truth Social, there’s Gab, there’s Get Her, there’s hater, there’s liar, there’s active shooter, sore loser – there’s never been more places to go to complain you’re being silenced.”
Trevor Noah
Meet Kari Lake: the MAGA newcomer fascinating not for who she is, but who she used to be. pic.twitter.com/ZYbZ39bKjc
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 26, 2022
And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah examined a particularly worrying GOP figure, the Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. “What makes Kari Lake’s story fascinating is not who she is, but who she used to be,” he said, as Lake used to be an Obama donor, a staple local news anchor in Phoenix, and close friend of a local drag queen for 20-plus years.
“Believe it or not, Kari Lake went from being a popular local newscaster to hating the media. She was personal friends with a drag queen, and now she says they’re a danger to children,” Noah explained. “I’ve heard of people being open to change, but this is almost not the same person. Like I wouldn’t be shocked if we found out the real Kari Lake was locked up in a basement somewhere while this Maga alien pretends to be her.”
“This is a bigger transformation than the drag queens she suddenly hates!” he continued. “Which, by the way, is particularly shitty. It’s already horrible to turn on any friend, but betraying the one who taught you how to get your contouring on point? That is unforgivable!”
Lake has aligned herself with Donald Trump and repeatedly refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. “Maybe you think Kari Lake’s election denials don’t concern you,” said Noah. You would be wrong, as “Arizona isn’t just where your aunt gets all her turquoise jewelry. It’s also a key swing state that helped push Joe Biden over the top in 2020. And if Kari Lake becomes governor, she could have the final say over who wins it in 2024.”
Asked by MSNBC if, in 2024, she’d be willing to put the country into constitutional crisis by not certifying Arizona’s election results, Lake answered: “Would you certify a crooked, corrupt election just to make peace?”
“She’s saying that if the election in 2024 is ‘stolen’ for Biden the same way the last election was ‘stolen’ for Biden, then she’s not going to approve the results,” Noah clarified. “And that would be chaos.”
To those saying Trump tried a coup and it didn’t work, Noah warned: “The reason it didn’t work is because there were various Republicans in key positions who didn’t go along with it. But if those people get replaced by people like Kari Lake, it’s a whole different story. Because you see, you don’t need to storm the Capitol when your friends have the keys.”
