Trevor Noah on Musk and Twitter: ‘I guess they found that edit button after all’
Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah processed Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter on Monday night’s Daily Show, after the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO bought the social media company for $44bn. Twitter’s board had previously said they wouldn’t sell, but “I guess they found that edit button after all,” Noah quipped.
“This is actually a historic moment: this is the first time anyone at Twitter has changed their mind about anything,” he added.
Noah wondered why Musk would want to own Twitter, as “it just doesn’t seem like a fun place to supervise right now. It’s like buying Jurassic Park after the power went down and the cages were opened.”
But “by buying Twitter, Elon Musk gets to own one of the most culturally influential publishing platforms in the world”, he explained. “I mean remember this, think about it. Twitter is how the Arab spring took off, right? Black Lives Matter blew up on Twitter. The #MeToo movement started on Twitter. Trump used Twitter to turn himself from a reality show joke into the 45th president of the United States and a joke. So owning Twitter gives you more power than the drug store employee with the key to the deodorant shelf.”
Whether you’re into Elon Musk or not, “you’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty crazy that one man is now in control in all of that,” Noah concluded. As a private company “everything that happens on Twitter from now on is up to him. And also whatever strain his weed guy gives him that day.
“Whether it’s a billionaire you like or a billionaire you hate,” he added, “as a society I think we should spend more time interrogating how easy it is for billionaires to shape our world in their favor.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers dove into yet another trove of Trump White House text messages from the immediate aftermath of the 6 January attack on the Capitol. According to records of text messages to and from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s daughter Ivanka texted Trump’s advisers on 6 January: “You are all WARRIORS of epic proportions! Keep the faith and the fight!”
“She’s trying to overturn the results of the election with the tone of a Peloton instructor,” Meyers noted. “Also, just a tip: if you’re planning a coup, maybe don’t do it via group chat.”
In other Trump-related news, “Republicans have made it clear they will debase themselves in the most humiliating ways possible to slink back to Trump and earn his support,” Meyers said, noting the about-face by JD Vance, a Senate candidate from Ohio. Vance first rose to prominence in 2016 with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and as a harsh critic of Trump from within the Republican party.
Now, however, Vance has “come crawling back to Trump’s endorsement by mindlessly parroting his various lies and conspiracy theories”, Meyers said, pointing to a rally the two hosted in Ohio over the weekend, in which Vance falsely claimed the FBI had wiretapped Trump.
“These guys just make shit up and don’t bother to explain it with madeup details because they don’t have to,” Meyers said. “They say they’re done with Trump on January 6 only to change their mind. Their base doesn’t care. They claim they never said something, only for tape to prove they’re lying – Fox News doesn’t cover it. They say the FBI wiretapped the president without proof, the crowd cheers.
“Because their base supports Donald Trump, the flip-floppiest, most truth-allergic, evidence-free human being who ever stood at a podium and bitched about toilets,” he concluded. “So of course Vance and all his allies have come slinking back.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also tore into the new batch of Mark Meadows text messages, including one from Donald Trump Jr that read: “This is one you go to the mattresses on. They will try to fuck his entire legacy on this if it gets worse.”
“Please, tell him, he won’t take my calls, Mark!” Kimmel mocked.
Kimmel also mocked the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who was caught on tape saying he’d push Trump to resign after the insurrection. (McCarthy has publicly denied saying this.) According to the tape, McCarthy said in January 2021: “I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.”
“That’s right, but then three weeks later, Trump’s prison bitch was back for the free cigarettes,” Kimmel said of McCarthy visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago in the weeks after the insurrection. “An Altoid lasts longer than Kevin McCarthy’s convictions.”