Stephen Colbert on Trump's police reforms: 'Before you get excited … don’t'
After weeks of sustained protests against anti-black racism and police brutality across America, Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to curb police violence. But “before you get excited … don’t,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, as the order “doesn’t do much”.
For example, the order promises federal grants to departments for training and certification courses. “I’m pretty sure the chant is ‘defund the police’,” said Colbert. “If you give them more funding, they’re just going to spend it on a tank called the De-Escalator 4000.”
Trump also promised to ban police use of chokeholds except “if an officer’s life is at risk”, which is, as Colbert noted, “a loophole big enough to drive a squad car through”.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign continues to plan for its rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this weekend, despite the public health risk of coronavirus and an editorial from the Tulsa World declaring “this is the wrong time and Tulsa is the wrong place for the Trump rally.” Well, “You know what they say: two wrongs make a rallyful of whites,” Colbert said.
Faced with public scrutiny over the risks of crowding thousands of people together indoors during a pandemic, the campaign has promised to have hand sanitizer and face masks on hand, though they won’t be required. “Then they’re not going to wear them!” Colbert said. “Just like Trump doesn’t wear them, which puts Trump in danger, too. The president of the United States is going to be exposed to the aerosolized spittle of 19,000 people. Honest to God, how does the Secret Service allow him to do that?”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah examined Trump’s executive order, a “confusing” measure in that it discourages police use of chokeholds unless an officer felt his life was threatened, “which means the thing can be used, but it can’t be used … but it can be used”, said Noah.
Noah also noted that Trump’s “heart wasn’t in” his announcement of the order, in which he constantly praised the police. “The only paper Trump has signed with less enthusiasm were his first two marriage certificates,” Noah said.
Trump once again downplayed the use of excessive force by police to a “tiny” number of officers, “but, I mean, if bad cops were a minor problem, you wouldn’t have huge protests in every city,” Noah countered. “You’d just be able to point at the bad cop and be like ‘hey, Gary! Cut that shit out!’”
While Trump’s executive order “clearly doesn’t have much teeth”, said Noah, some cities are taking concrete, immediate action – this week, the New York police department disbanded the 600-member plainclothes undercover unit, notorious for its excessive and discriminatory use of force, and San Francisco and Albuquerque city councils said 911 calls for situations such as drug overdoses and mental health emergencies will result in trained professionals instead of armed police. “I think we can all agree: this is long overdue in America,” Noah said of the reforms. “Police in America do too much. So if you can avoid bringing armed police to these situations in the first place, that should be the goal. Because wherever a gun is present, that means that there’s a chance the gun is going to go off.
“I know this seems like a radical idea to some people,” Noah concluded of sending in unarmed police to most calls. “But if you think about it, it’s the same thing we did with Ghostbusters over 30 years ago. They used to send cops out when the ghosts showed up, and at some point they realized that the cops were not the right people to deal with the ghost issue, so they created the Ghostbusters. They didn’t have guns, they had ghost vacuum cleaners – it worked way better, and it was also funnier.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel discussed an upcoming tell-all book from the former national security adviser John Bolton, AKA “the guy who offered to testify during the impeachment trial, but the Republicans said: nah, no thanks, we’re good”.
“I’ll be honest, I’ve almost forgotten about the impeachment trial,” said Kimmel. “At this point it feels like a Hulu show I was really into and then hated the ending of.”
Bolton’s book is called The Room Where It Happened, a reference to the musical Hamilton, “which is kinda weird – it’s like if Woodward and Bernstein called their book Nixon Christ Superstar”.
The book will supposedly expose misconduct by Trump beyond his quid pro quo phone call with Ukraine, “and while many think the president should be worried, the president thinks John Bolton should be worried”, said Kimmel.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that conversations with him were “highly classified information” and that he hoped the book’s publication brought “criminal problems” for Bolton – made-up standards that were “rules for a bachelor party, not the law”.