With much of late night on vacation this week, it fell to a skeleton crew Monday night to tackle a U.S. President’s refusal to comply with a Supreme Court order to free the man his administration admits was sent to a foreign prison by mistake. Of course there was plenty of time left over to marvel at the shape of Jeff Bezos’ rocket and the suspect nature of Donald Trump’s presidential physical. Here’s our rundown.
Jon Stewart
The Daily Show‘s Monday evening quarterback conceded this week that maybe his critics were right. Noting how those Bluesky users had been telling him “in all caps” for months that he was downplaying Donald Trump going full authoritarian, Jon Stewart took on Monday’s White House meeting where Trump, alongside El Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, defied the Supreme Court order that the administration return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from that country’s prisons.
Garcia, as Stewart noted, was swept up in Trump’s ICE raids due to “administrative error” and is now among those deportees currently locked up in a foreign maximum security prison without due process. Trump’s scolding intransigence when confronted by the press at that meeting prompted Stewart to play a rhetorical game of “How Authoritarian Is We?,” a would-be dictator’s checklist that the host noted Trump is scoring pretty high on—with one notable exception.
“He’s gonna do that to U.S. citizens. I think the hosts of The View are about to be ‘administratively errored.'”
on trump’s threat to deport “homegrown criminals” to el salvadoran prisons
“Trump’s done a lot of the standard fare. He’s attacked the free press, pulled random people off the streets, made law firms and universities bend the knee, announced Department of Justice investigations against people whose sole crime was suggesting that the 2020 election had been safe and well-administered. You know, the bad, bad people.”
“If he were Moses, I think that there were some ‘Thou shalt nots’ that he might want to take a look at.”
on a fox news commentator comparing trump to moses
“That’s not a dimension. Length, width, depth, four is time. There’s no f*ckin’ five. He is a god, who has created a whole other dimension. Through which he plays board games.”
on another commentator claiming trump is playing “5-D chess”
“I don’t know what your advisers have told you about the authoritarian bargain, but the basic deal is this. The American people look the other way while you disappear undesirables, knuckle under the elites, ban all seven trans athletes from our nation’s beloved NCAA fencing tournaments—you know, all the people that are holding us back. And then you in turn, make sh*t work. You wanna ignore the Supreme Court and all the other courts and take away people’s licenses to broadcast, fine. But when the planes go up, they’ve gotta come down. And not on fire.”
“You can take over Greenland, demonize Canada, dominate the golfing pro circuit, but in return our children should be somewhat safe from most Victorian era diseases.”
“You wanna destroy NPR, PBS, the Voice of America, sell the naming rights to the Washington Monument to HIMS.com, use the r-word, the p-word, the c-word, make up your own slurs, have the United States Naval Academy remove Maya Angelou from its bookshelves but for some reason keep Mein Kampf—which is a real f*cking thing that they did—we’ll be fine! We weren’t that crazy about this system of the government in the first place.”
Stephen Colbert
The formerly looming, now present constitutional crisis an inevitable topic, Stephen Colbert told his Late Show audience he was going to serve “dessert first,” putting off the truly dark subject matter in favor of a few jokes about J.D. Vance fumbling one of sports’ most hallowed trophies and the all-woman space flight on Jeff Bezos’ rocket ship that included Katy Perry and Gayle King.
“You’ve gotta hand it to J.D. Actually, don’t hand him anything.”
on vance breaking ohio state’s NCAA football trophy
“I’m not saying America’s becoming misogynist, but this morning six women tried to flee the planet.”
“And this time, that rocket does not look like a penis. Because this time it is an all-female crew, it looks like a personal massager.”
Colbert then moved on to Trump’s presidential physical. Warning his crowd, “I regret to inform you that it’s now time to talk about Donald Trump’s body,” Colbert took on the questionable claims of Trump’s doctor.
“He continued, adding, ‘His well-being is also due to a cruel, indifferent universe where hardworking people are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but an objectively evil monster who only eats cheeseburgers and fried chicken lives forever. The world is chaos, There is no God, proven by his frequent victories in golf events!'”
“‘Well-managed’ of course is a medical term meaning ‘covered in deck varnish.'”
on the report mentioning trump’s skin condition
“‘No, a very good soul. At least that’s what the red guy with the horns said down at the crossroads.'”
on trump claiming his report also gave him a soul checkup as well
But Colbert couldn’t put off the administration’s refusal to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia forever, as he cautioned his viewers, “This next part you’re gonna want to put in a bite stick.”
“I’d say that’s underselling it. At least in hell you never get a visit from Kristi Noem.”
on a description of the el salvadoran prison as “hell on earth”
“Trump’s folks are trying to whoopsie-daisy a human rights violation. It’s like when Hitler came out with Mein Bad.”
“Yes you do! You’re a dictator. All you have to do is dictate that he gets out of prison then go on Orbitz and get him a one way ticket to Maryland. And his torture will be over as long as you don’t fly him on Spirit Airlines.”
on El salvador’s bukele claiming he doesn’t have the power to return garcia
Colbert pointed to the massive crowds greeting Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Coachella as perhaps one glimmer of hope.
“Do you know how bad things have to be for an 83-year-old man to go willingly to Coachella? It’s loud, there’s nowhere to sit down, and it’s impossible to find orthotics that go with camo, micro-shorts, and a macrame halter top.”
Jimmy Kimmel
Kimmel chose to ignore the whole “defy the Supreme Court” thing for now. After all, there are penis rockets (he and Colbert sharing the same thought), Bernie at Coachella, and Donald Trump’s fawning physical to joke about.
“Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sanchez became the first group of women ever to visit outer space in a giant penis. I mean that is a penis, right? On Amazon they would call it a personal massager.”
“Bernie gave a rousing speech about America and what we need to do to save it, then did five songs with Tupac’s hologram, it was awesome.”
“Maybe they just weighed Trump’s head.”
on the doctor claiming trump is 6’3″ and 224 pounds
“The doctor said Trump’s BMO is 28. Right. And so is his next wife, by the way.”
“The same group of people that think Anthony Fauci is a liar and want him arrested hear that Donald Trump—a person they can see with their own eyes—weighs 224 pounds. They go, ‘Finally, an honest doctor.'”
“Oof, to be fair he doesn’t like grabbing women by the hands.”
on trump snubbing RFK Jr’s wife Cheryl Hines at a ufc fight
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the LateNighter is the habitual joy of my day. Unfortunately, the newsletter featuring Jimmy Fallon can not be seen here in Europe. 🙏🤣
You should be so lucky as to read up on that obnoxious suck, Fuckface Fallon!
“Colbert pointed to the massive crowds greeting Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Coachella as perhaps one glimmer of hope.”
And this right here is why late night should die! When you constantly attack Democrats for not doing what YOU think they should be doing, while praising Bernie the Bum and Little Miss Sandy Cortez for their ratfucking ways, then it’s clear they don’t know what they’re talking about!