Colbert on Chris Wallace’s move to CNN: ‘There goes Fox News’s last shred of credibility’
Stephen Colbert
“It has been a crazy and bewildering year,” said Stephen Colbert to kick off his final week of Late Shows for 2021, a year of political chaos, an attempted coup, extreme weather events and the continual bottoming-out of rightwing media. Things have gone so off the rails at Fox, the Late Show host explained, that even Chris Wallace, one of Fox News’s veteran broadcast journalists, announced this weekend that he would leave the network for CNN+ after 18 years.
“It’s the end of an era, but luck
ily Fox has already filled the time slot with the flaming Christmas tree,” Colbert quipped. Wallace, the network’s most decorated down-the-middle journalists, was one of the few anchors at the network willing to ask difficult questions.
“There goes Fox News’s last shred of credibility,” said Colbert. “Now they have to change their slogan from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘Horse paste and gun! Argle Bargle! Argle Bargle!’”
Wallace hosted his last episode of Fox News Sunday this weekend, with his final guest being Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “Wow, what a way to go out,” Colbert deadpanned. “That’s like being able to request anything as your last meal on death row and ordering an interview with Lindsey Graham.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers delved into a PowerPoint explicating methods for a political coup that circled through Trumpworld in early 2021.
“They did everything they could, left no stone unturned, looked for every crack and crevice in our democracy they could possibly find,” Meyers explained of Donald Trump’s efforts to prevent the transition of power.
“Trump tried so many different avenues”, he added. “He was like the guy in the grocery store during Christmas rush who keeps switching checkout aisles.
“It’s so disorienting for things to be both this dangerous and this dumb at the same time,” he continued, pointing to the “truly insane” PowerPoint. The 38-page presentation included options such as declaring a national emergency; a retired army colonel, Philip Waldron, briefed the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, several times about the PowerPoint.
Trump famously never writes things down, but “I guess he forgot to tell his underlings before they started emailing a PowerPoint around detailing their crimes,” said Meyers. “Even the mafia knows to use code words. If the mafia ever made a powerpoint presentation, it would say something vague, like ‘Plan For The Guys At The Place To Do The Thing’.”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah explained how California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, plans to use Texas’s restrictive abortion law as a model for gun control in the state. Under Newsom’s plan, California citizens will be able to sue anyone who makes, distributes or sells the assault weapons, citing supreme court rulings that have allowed the Texas anti-abortion law to stay in effect.
“The idea is that because the supreme court is allowing this for banning abortion, they’re going to have to allow it for banning guns, too,” Noah said. “But here’s the thing: the problem with this idea is that the supreme court can make up whatever rules they like.
If they want to strike down these gun laws, they’ll find a way, you know?
“The supreme court is like that annoying kid that your mom made you have play dates with,” he added, mimicking a thwarted game of tag – “‘Tag, I got you!’ ‘Nuh uh, I have a vest that makes me invisible.’
“America has gotten so divided right now”, he continued, “that at this point I think maybe some states should just like … secede? And try to do their own thing. Have they tried that before? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel mocked an event held by Trump and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in Orlando that drew disappointing crowd sizes. The event, the first in their planned “history tour”, played to an arena with many empty seats, reported the Sun-Sentinel.
“If the place was any emptier, it would be Don Jr’s head,” Kimmel quipped.
“It was disappointing, to say the least,” he joked.
Though tickets originally sold for upwards of $100, the tour eventually gave away some for free. “This happens a lot with things Trump puts his name on,” Kimmel explained. “First they’re considered to be valuable, and then everyone realizes they are garbage. We’ve seen this with his ties, his steaks, his university, his children.”