Trevor Noah on Trump: 'There is no impeachment lite'
Late-night hosts continued the process the impeachment of Donald Trump on Thursday night, a historic if long expected development that brought cheers from Trevor Noah’s audience at the Daily Show. “Well, you guys might be cheering,” Noah responded, “but when Democrats in the House tried to cheer last night, Nancy Pelosi shut it down real fast” with a look that would “send the champagne cork right back into the bottle”.
The vote orchestrated by Pelosi in the House made Trump only the third president in American history to be impeached, and “you can see what’s happening: he’s trying to convince everyone that it doesn’t bother him”, said Noah. At a rally held during Wednesday night’s impeachment vote in Battle Creek, Michigan, Trump dismissed the two articles as “impeachment lite” that “cheapened” the process by disallowing presidents to make phone calls. “There’s no impeachment lite,” countered Noah. “Impeachment is like herpes – you either have it or you don’t.
“I like how he says everyone who becomes president from now on can get impeached for having a phone call,” Noah continued. “Obviously, what Trump said on the phone call with Ukraine is what matters, not the fact that he just made a call. Trump’s either being disingenuous, or he took completely the wrong lesson from this whole thing. Because this would be like OJ going, ‘Alright, fine, I learned my lesson – I won’t wear gloves any more.’”
Finally, Noah closed out the year with highlights from Trump’s usual word-garble during public speeches, with his best non-words of 2019 including: infantroopen, transpants, delegitimatize, pivitible, heroilynn and bipartiss solucius.
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert ended his 2019 with a special holiday animation short called Once Upon Impeachment, then pivoted to the future. “I’m looking forward to a great 2020 because next year, we could be getting a new president,” he said. “And on day one, he or she will have a very important job: getting the old president to leave the Oval Office peacefully. I suggest cake on a rope.”
In the spirit of the season, he continued: “I do want to give Donald Trump credit on a rare good decision: signing an executive order giving most federal employees a paid day off on Christmas Eve.
“You know, Christmas Eve is such an important day,” Colbert said, imitating the president. “And so busy – we all get visited by those three ghosts who make us watch poor people eat dinner, right?”
Meanwhile, 15 Democrats continue to campaign “to put coal in Trump’s stocking this year”, including the former vice-president Joe Biden, who just released his medical report. The public report says he’s a “healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”, although he does have an irregular heartbeat – which means that “on the plus side”, said Colbert, “our next president might actually have a heart”.
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel reflected on how Nancy Pelosi “roasted the president’s chestnuts pretty good” with the impeachment vote this week. Trump, predictably, has not taken the news well; Kimmel turned to clips from his Michigan rally, in which he lashed out at the congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who filled in for her deceased husband, the former congressman John Dingell, and voted to impeach the president. “Trump believes that since he graciously allowed the flags of federal buildings to be lowered to halfmast to honor John Dingell, his widow should’ve showed her appreciation by voting not to impeach,” Kimmel explained. “In other words, another quid pro quo is what he was expecting.”
Kimmel then turned to the Democratic debate held in Los Angeles on Thursday evening. “Good luck to them,” he said, “because all they’re doing with these debates is throwing fuel on the comedy inferno known as Mike Pence.”
Kimmel rolled a series of clips in which the vice-president repeated, at least five separate times, the same joke about Democrats standing so far left that the stage would trip over. “That’s what happens when they forget to reboot him,” quipped Kimmel.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers explained how Trump’s impeachment “is not some sort of misuse of congressional powers – it’s exactly what the framers had in mind when they wrote the impeachment clause into the constitution”. He pointed to the justification provided in House Democrats’ 658page report detailing the evidence against Trump: “The president betrayed the nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections … President Trump has realized the framers’ worst nightmare.
“I think that’s true in the metaphorical sense and also literally,” said Meyers. “Back in those days, people would have nightmares about stuff like demons, vampires or rubella, and Trump looks like all three.
“He looks like a stowaway who spent three months hiding in a crate in the bowls of a ship who got bit by a plague rat and a Dracula,” he added next to a photo of Rudy Giuliani.
Meyers also recapped the president’s unhinged rally in Michigan, in which he raved about so many disparate topics – the event’s security, the California congressman Adam Schiff, phone calls, dishwashers – that CNN compiled a list to keep track. “That’s right, the president attacked security guards, Democrats, the media and dishwashers,” Meyers said. “Normally when someone rambles that long, you have to take away their keys.”