Missed Tuesday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
Induce Gagging
As his trial over illegally trying to hush up any scandals that might have derailed his 2016 run for President continues, Donald Trump continues to violate his own gag order. Whether it’s via his all-caps broadsides on social media or his prop-heavy pre- and post-proceedings press conferences, Trump persists in attacking jurors, the judge, the prosecutors, the legal system, and any reporters who publish accounts of him napping and passing copious gas in the courtroom.
In fact, on this second trial day proper, Trump stormed out of a morning session to determine whether he’d violated the gag order and… immediately violated the gag order, putting out a Truth Social rant attacking Judge Juan Merchan and the New York DA’s office. And while Merchan himself has put off ruling on whether Trump will actually face any consequences for so blatantly flouting a court order, this week’s depleted complement of late-night hosts weren’t so circumspect, with The Daily Show‘s Jordan Klepper marveling, “Wow, this guy is incapable of keeping his mouth shut for two minutes. Has Trump ever considered paying himself hush money?”
[On the recommended punishment for violating a gag order] “Yeah, $1000? That’s not going to stop Trump from talking, okay. You’ve got to deal with this like any other tantrum. You’ve gotta give Trump an iPad with Cocomelon on it and let him zone out.”
Ronny Chieng
“He violated the gag order during the hearing about whether he violated the gag order.”
jimmy kimmel
“This is a complicated issue about balancing rights. Basically, the prosecution’s argument is that a juror has the right to feel safe while serving on Donald Trump’s jury. While Donald Trump’s argument is that that juror lives at 34 West 52nd Street, and maybe someone should pay that juror a visit and straighten him out.”
jordan klepper
[After Judge Merchan told Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche that he was “losing all credibility” by claiming Trump was obeying the gag order] “To his credit Blanche fired back. He said, ‘Your Honor, I lost all credibility when I agreed to represent Donald Trump.'”
jimmy kimmel
Cruel and Unusual Sitting
The fact that a defendant in a criminal trial is being required to actually sit in a chair is suddenly news to the Trump-loving folks at Fox News, who have switched their sycophantic coverage from “Donald Trump is an alpha male” to “Donald Trump can’t handle eight hours a day in a courtroom” with customary flip-flopping vehemence. With Trump himself complaining about everything from the chilliness of the courtroom to the fact that all testimony so far is very much not going his way, late-night hosts zeroed in on Trump’s media supporters as they expressed outrage that the former President of the United States is subject to the exact same legal proceedings and conditions millions of Americans undergo every year.
After Fox’s favorite juror-doxxer Jesse Watters claimed that Trump was receiving stricter treatment than September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Jordan Klepper called for calm, noting, “Okay, that sounds wild. But I think Jesse Watters is a reasonable man—because I was kicked in the head by a horse last week.”
“I thought Trump was supposed to be young, vigorous candidate in the race. Now when he needs sympathy, suddenly he’s a poor, elderly man crippled by the weight of his own body pulverizing his bones into dust against his chair.”
jordan klepper
“Look, we all know how Donald Trump loves exercise—because of this trial, he’s been morbidly obese for the last 40 years.”
Ronny Chieng
“Are we talking about Donald Trump or an old English sheepdog? ‘You can’t keep him cooped up all day, he needs time outside or he’ll pee on the couch.'”
jordan klepper
“I’ll give Jesse Watters the benefit of the doubt, because I was also kicked in the head by the same horse. But I mean, this is the guy asking to be President of the United States. I mean, thats got to be at least a 40 hour a week gig.”
ronny chieng
“Wow! Eight hours a day, four days a week—it’s literally torture. Or, as the rest of the world calls it, a job. A part-time job, to be fair.”
jordan klepper
[In response to Trump being compared to 1960’s civil rights workers on Fox] “There is literally no difference between Donald Trump and the three men who were murdered by the Klan? Can somebody please put a sock down Newt Gingrich’s throat already.”
jimmy kimmel
“Would Trump even want fresh air and exercise? These actually sound the like the punishments the judge would give Trump if he’s convicted.”
jordan klepper
[On Watters’ outrage that Trump’s whereabouts at trial are common knowledge] “Yes, it’s very dangerous for people to know Trump’s exact location, which is why he lives in a nondescript building with his name on the front.”
ronny chieng
“The Trump campaign also tells us where he’s going to be at exactly when. They’re called Trump rallies, and it’s how I know where to go to get yelled at.”
jordan klepper
Inquiring Minds Don’t Need to Know
As the cliché has come to be, every Republican accusation is a confession. The latest example of the maxim came in Tuesday’s trial testimony from close Trump friend and former publisher of the even more journalistically bankrupt than you imagined National Enquirer. Former publisher David Pecker was devastatingly forthcoming as he outlined how, at the direction of Trump and former fixer Michael Cohen, the supermarket checkout rag had a policy of both planting defamatory and damaging false stories about Trump’s 2016 opponents and of playing “catch and kill” by paying for anti-Trump stories and then ensuring that they would not be published, anywhere.
Responding to the still-loyal Pecker’s assertion that Donald Trump had a “mutually beneficial” and loyal relationship with the Enquirer with regard to Trump’s oft-cited “fake news,” Jimmy Kimmel noted, “Think about how insane it is that our former President had a mutually beneficial relationship with the National Enquirer. There are only two people on the planet who can say that— Donald Trump and Bigfoot.”
“Today was the second day of Trump’s hush money trial and the first witness was the editor of the National Enquirer. He testified that, to help Trump win the 2016 election, he would buy scandalous stories about Trump and bury them. And what a good job he did. I can’t think of a single Trump scandal.”
jordan klepper
“The one and only witness today was Trump’s old pal and former publisher of the National Enquirer, a guy named David Pecker. Who looks like the man on the Pringles can was now dating your mom.”
jimmy kimmel
The Incredible, Inedible Joe
With his opponent swamped in legal proceedings all over the country and considering the hard-right GOP’s deeply unpopular policies and utter inability to govern, it seems like all President Joe Biden has to do is avoid any unforced errors to ensure a 2020 repeat victory. Which is why hosts continued to choke back shock that Biden once more dipped into his old kit bag of folksy, questionable tales to relate how his uncle was supposedly shot down and then eaten by cannibals during World War II. With Papua New Guinean Prime Minster James Marape demanding an apology for the sketchy tale of jungle uncle-snacking, hosts essentially echoed Biden’s signature refrain from his debates with Donald Trump: “C’mon, man…”
“Look, at some point, we all get to an age where we confuse our own life story with the plot of Indiana Jones, it happens.”
jordan klepper
“I know the Prime Minster was upset, understandably. But hey, if someone accused my country of being cannibals, I’d just run with it. Like, Don’t f**k with us or we’ll put your d*ck on a kaiser roll.”
ronny chieng
“Biden apologized to the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister by inviting him to a dinner with Pete Buttigieg, who will be served over rice with a balsamic reduction.”
jordan klepper
Potpourri
“It’s World Book Day. Or as the state of Florida calls it, Bonfire Day.”
jimmy kimmel
[On Biden campaigning in Florida] “His advisors were worried about him going there because a lot of times when an 81-year-old goes to Florida they don’t come back.”
jimmy kimmel
[On Mitt Romney assessing Trump’s guilt by noting, “As far as I know you don’t pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you”] “Mitt Romney is a Republican who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid, but every once in a while he likes to come crashing through the wall.”
jimmy kimmel
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