Trevor Noah: 'The only thing Trump avoids more than condemning white supremacists is taxes'
A full day removed from the first presidential debate – a disastrous spectacle pundits called a “shitshow” and, to quote CNN’s Jake Tapper, “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck” – late-night shows processed one of the evening’s most disturbing highlights: Donald Trump’s refusal to condemn white supremacy.
Asked specifically to do so by the moderator, Chris Wallace, the president instead rambled: “I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace” and “Give me a name, who do you want me to name?” When Wallace answered “white supremacists” as Biden supplied the Proud Boys, a men-only extremist group which supports violence, Trump responded: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
“There you have it, folks. Trump had an opportunity to be like, ‘White supremacists, I don’t fuck with you,’” said Trevor Noah, and “instead he’s like ‘Stand by, guys. I never know when I’m gonna need you.’”
Trump’s avoidance was so egregious that even his supporters at Fox News acknowledged it, but “they still give him the benefit of the doubt”, said Noah. For example: “I don’t know if he didn’t hear it, but he’s gotta clarify that right away,” said the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. “Why the president didn’t just knock that out of the park, I’m not sure.”
“I wish I had friends who were that loyal,” Noah joked in response. “If I shat my pants in public, none of my friends would be like, ‘Trevor didn’t shit himself, his butt misspoke.’”
It’s not like Trump’s refusal to denounce white supremacy is surprising, Noah added – this is the same man who said there were “very fine people on both sides” after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. In nearly four years as president, Noah said, “the only thing [Trump] avoids more than condemning white supremacists is paying taxes”.
Seth Meyers
Tuesday’s debate was “more like a collective brain hemorrhage” than a discussion, said Seth Meyers on Late Night. Watching it was like “hotboxing a Porta Potty with crystal meth in Phoenix in July. It was like being hit on the head with a lead pipe in a room filled with nitrous oxide. It was like watching a two-person performance of 12 Angry Men where one actor played one part and one was mad enough for the other 11.”
In other words, it was “one of the most embarrassing debacles in American history”, said Meyers. And yet “the Fox News post-debate spin was even more pathetic than all the whining about the moderator”, he added, playing a clip of Fox commentator Dan Bongino calling Trump the “apex predator” and “the lion king”.
“He’s like a cross between He-Man,