Stephen Colbert on Mike Pence: 'So full of crap he’s attracting flies'
Mike Pence and Kamala Harris squared off in the one and only vice-presidential debate on Wednesday night, in a relatively tame affair which “proved once and for all, by comparison, what a flaming turd pile last week’s debate was”, said Stephen Colbert.
“Trump’s debate performance last week was a hurricane of bad faith. It bordered on a demonstration of the banality of evil,” the Late Show host added in a live taping after the debate wrapped in Utah. With the VP debate, on the other hand, “we were faced with the banality of banality”.
“It was everything we expected,” he added. “Pence talked over all the women in the room, moderator tried to call for order, the vice-president got a couple good licks in, and Senator Harris broke a pool cue and beat Pence over the head with the Trump administration’s failures.”
Chief among those failures was the administration’s bungling of the coronavirus pandemic, up to and including an outbreak at the White House last week which has infected the president. In response to health concerns, the commission on presidential debates added two Plexiglass barriers between the candidates on stage, although as Colbert pointed out: “I’ve seen better sneeze guards at the Sizzler’s salad bar.”
A highlight of the evening, at least on social media, was not anything either candidate said, but a house fly which perched on Pence’s head – “He’s so full of crap, he’s attracting flies!” Colbert exclaimed.“God bless you, fly. I guess the Plexiglass wasn’t high enough.”
“But listen, listen, all jokes aside, thoughts and prayers to that fly’s family,” he added. “It’s gotta quarantine for two weeks now. We’ve got to get that fly to Walter Reed.”
The fly rested on Pence’s head for over two minutes, “meaning that fly has a longer attention span than the president of the United States”.
Jimmy Kimmel
Despite an outbreak at the White
House that has now infected at least 34 people in the president’s orbit, including Trump himself, Pence’s team initially opposed the installation of two Plexiglass dividers between the candidates for Wednesday night’s debate. Which makes sense, Jimmy Kimmel joked, because “Mike Pence believes that if you’re going to separate a man and a woman, it should be from their children at the border of the United States.
“Having a conversation through a glass partition was good practice for Mike Pence,” Kimmel added, “because after January, that’s how he’s going to have to do it when he visits his former boss at the correctional facility.”
The “big star” of the debate, however, was the fly, which landed “quite symbolically” on his head and stayed for two minutes and three seconds. “Technically, that fly is now his running mate,” said Kimmel. “Mike Pence’s fly just became the most popular Halloween costume of 2020.”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah recapped the White House’s status as the “new head of coronavirus”, which has been spreading through the executive office “faster than an HBO password on a college campus”.
The White House outbreak, which led to Trump’s hospitalization at Walter Reed over the weekend, has now infected at least 34 people in Trump’s orbit, from military generals to security staff and Trump’s personal assistant.
“The nation’s top generals and the guy who carries the nuclear football are all quarantining now,” Noah said. “And you might think that this is the perfect opportunity to invade America because the Pentagon is going to have to coordinate America’s defense over Zoom, but actually, given how infectious America is right now, good luck convincing your soldiers to attack.
“Basically, right now, America is that free mattress that you find on the curb,” he added. “You could take it, but you know it’s infested with something.
“You’ve gotta appreciate the irony, though,” Noah concluded. “A president who spent years blaming Mexicans for bringing over disease has personally turned the White House into a petri dish.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers reacted to Trump abruptly scuttling negotiations for a congressional deal on coronavirus relief, by tweet. “Dude, you yourself just got Covid,” Meyers said. “This is like Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning and going ‘You there, boy! You’re ugly!’”
In other news, “ahead of tonight’s debate, Vice-President Mike Pence’s staff initially requested no Plexiglass
barriers be placed on his side of the stage. Said Pence: ‘If there’s going to be any flat, transparent divider on that stage, it’s going to be me.’”
Meyers also touched on news that the White House adviser Stephen Miller, the man behind the administration’s immigration policies, had tested positive for coronavirus. “Well, everyone else in the White House has it, and you know how much he’d hate to be in the minority,” Meyers joked.