Colbert on Trump’s second week: ‘America is having some second thoughts’
Late-night hosts criticised Donald Trump’s racist response to this week’s devastating plane crash while taking aim at the billionaires surrounding him.
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert started by reminding us that this is the second week of Trump’s second term and that “America is having some second thoughts”.
He said it was important to be fully aware of what is happening, “if only to hold on to the knowledge that none of this is normal” as his appalling behaviour is being supported and allowed by “Maga-goons and spineless apologists”.
With Trump also narrowly winning the popular vote this time, Colbert said, “you might start to suspect that maybe you’re crazy but nope, it’s still him”.
Related: Seth Meyers on Trump: ‘Even I didn’t think he would turn the government off’
He said that while people thought there might be another side to him this time, it “turns out there is no other side”, calling him “fascist Flat Stanley”.
This week, Trump’s response to the tragic plane crash in DC, the deadliest in 24 years, was the result of DEI and Democrats. Colbert said “it’s his only game” to lay blame in this way.
Trump is also planning to use Guantánamo Bay to house illegal immigrants, which means rather than building new camps, he’s “refurbishing” them instead. Colbert called it a “bad and stupid idea for a lot of reasons”.
This week also saw an American family detained by Ice after they were overheard speaking Spanish. “Hey, Ice dummies, some Americans can speak other languages,” Colbert said before saying that his knowledge of Latin could have him deported to ancient Rome.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also spoke about Trump’s assertion that diversity was to blame for the crash. When asked why he believed this, he said it was down to common sense.
“Take it from a man who looked directly into an eclipse, you need common sense,” Kimmel quipped.
He added: “He heard the word ‘black hawk’ and he thinks, if that hawk had been white.”
While Republicans forever claim it’s too soon after a school shooting to blame a lack of gun control, it’s “never too soon for Trump to point his finger”.
Kimmel added that he was “callous, racist, sexist and most of all he’s stupid” and that “maybe he gets jealous when a disaster gets more coverage than him”.
He said that he was impressed by the “sheer number of ways he finds to be a dirtbag – it’s kind of miraculous”.
But that none of this will have an impact as “even the billionaires are scared of him” with Meta folding and deciding to pay him for his earlier suspension from Facebook. “Even at 78 years old, Trump is still bullying nerds out of their lunch money,” he said.
Kimmel said that Trump was “shaking these guys down like a mob boss”.
One of his closest rich pals is Elon Musk, who constantly brags about sleeping at work. “He has 12 children and no home. He’s like the old lady who lives in a shoe,” he joked.
He moved on to the Senate hearings for Kash Patel, “the least qualified candidate for any cabinet position ever”, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has “views so demented they should come with a warning from the surgeon general”.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers said that in his first two weeks, Trump had “signed so many executive orders even he can’t keep track of them” but that many of them were “illegal and unworkable”.
He also added that none are about “lowering prices, the number one thing voters said they care about”, and instead he is “stripping the copper wire out of the walls before the oligarchs take over”.
Kimmel moved on to RFK Jr and called out his “deranged lies that will hurt regular people”.
Meyers said that the tactic over the first two weeks was to “wear you down” with all of this and that Trump hopes to “intimidate and overwhelm” those who go against him.
“They want their opponents to feel defeated,” he said, before adding: “He’s there to hollow out the government and hand the scraps to his rich buddies while they rip you off.”
