Trevor Noah: 'You know Trump’s luck has run out now that McConnell has conceded'
Trevor Noah
The electoral college certified Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election on Monday, which means that “for the 30th time, Donald Trump’s attempts to undo the election have once again finally come to and end”, said Trevor Noah on Tuesday’s Daily Show. With that vote, a constitutional formality reflecting state election results known weeks ago, “even some of [Trump’s] biggest enablers are accepting reality”. On Tuesday, the Republican senators Pat Toomey, John Thune and Mitch McConnell,
the Senate majority leader, all publicly acknowledged Biden as president-elect.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, also congratulated Biden with a message that reportedly read: “I am ready for interaction and contacts with you.”
“Putin doesn’t sound human, he sounds like a self-checkout at a CVS – ‘Ready for interaction. Pleased to place item in the bag,’” Noah joked. “What a weird phrase – ‘I am ready for interaction and contacts with you?’ Sounds like Mike Pence getting frisky.
“And you know Trump’s luck has run out now that Mitch McConnell has conceded the election,” Noah continued. “Because forget Putin – if Mitch can’t find a way to subvert American democracy, then it just can’t be done.”
In other news, attorney general and longtime Trump stalwart William Barr announced Monday he would step down from the lame-duck administration just five weeks before the Biden transition. The decision “surprised some people”, said Noah, “because for a long time, it seemed like he was ride or die with Trump. He whitewashed the Mueller reports, he protected Trump’s cronies, he even reportedly ordered peaceful protesters to be teargassed just so that Trump could walk over to a church and wave a Bible next to it.”
The point is, “these two were like Batman and Robin, if Batman and Robin couldn’t fit into their tights”, Noah joked. Which means only one of two things happened: “Either Barr quit, because Trump is too batshit crazy even for him, or Trump fired Barr because he’s not batshit crazy enough to roll in this White House.”
Seeing that the whole Trump White House will be out of a job come 20 January, Noah concluded, “at least Bill Barr is beating the traffic”.
Stephen Colbert
With the electoral college certification of Joe Biden’s victory, “some Republicans have been forced to face their biggest fear: reality”, said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. On Tuesday, McConnell “took to the Senate floor and bravely faced a fact”, which is, in his words, that “the electoral college has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-Elect Joe Biden.”
Similarly, the Texas senator John Cornyn told reporters: “There comes a time when you have to realize that despite your best efforts, you’ve been unsuccessful.”
“It’s like we tell kids when they play sports,” Colbert mocked. “It is important to realize when you’ve lost, and then six weeks later drive back to the field so you can shake the other team’s hands and say, ‘Good game, you cheater.’”
Still, even with the concessions of leading Senate Republicans, “some in the GOP are still struggling to mince words in a way that will appease he who shall not be named”, Colbert explained, such as the Wyoming senator John Barrasso, who called a straightforward question on whether or not Biden was president-elect a “gotcha” question. “Yeah, classic gotcha question,” Colbert deadpanned, “like ‘Who’s the president?’ and ‘What’s your name?’ and ‘What year is it?’ and ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’”
Even Putin has acknowledged Trump’s defeat, Colbert continued, and it’s “not a great look for Senate Republicans when the guy who interfered in our election is like, ‘Come on, he won, at a certain point you guys are poisoning democracy.’”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel panned “turtle-faced” McConnell’s belated congratulations to Biden. The Senate majority leader announced Tuesday that “as of this morning, our country has a president-elect” – “as if we hadn’t had one for the 40 more mornings before that”, Kimmel said.
Biden’s congratulatory message from “Trump’s KGBFF” Putin that the Russian leader is “ready for cooperation and contacts with you” should be “easy”, Kimmel continued, “because Russia just hacked all of our contacts”.
“But wait, if Putin is offering a congratulatory handshake to Joe Biden, then what is Trump eating pellets out of?” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump continued to deny the electoral reality, tweeting on Tuesday more baseless claims of election fraud eventually flagged by Twitter as misleading or untrue.
“I can’t believe they’re still bothering to put up that little warning under every one of his bogus tweets,” Kimmel said of Twitter’s post-hoc factchecking. “Why not just post a banner at the top of the whole feed that says, ‘This space is condemned?’”