Seth Meyers: Fox News hosts on 6 January ‘all knew how dangerous this situation was’
Seth Meyers tore into Fox News hosts on Wednesday evening for frantic text messages to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the 6 January attack on the Capitol. As revealed by the House select committee investigating the insurrection on Monday, hosts Laura Ingraham, Brian Kilmeade, and Sean Hannity each pleaded with Meadows to get Donald Trump to stop the attack – concern at odds with their public support of the riot.
“Mark, the President needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home,” Ingraham texted to Meadows. “This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.”
“Please, get him on TV, destroying everything you have accomplished,” wrote Brian Kilmeade.
“Were you all really shocked that people were violently storming the Capitol?” Meyers wondered. “You’re the ones who told them the election was stolen.”
“The two-step these guys tried to pull off by telling their viewers there was fraud, then claiming we had to investigate that made-up fraud because their viewers believe there was fraud is honestly insulting to everyone’s intelligence,” he added. “That’s the logic of parents who tell their kids there’s a monster under their bed who will come out at night and eat them if they don’t brush their teeth, then complain that their children don’t want to go to bed.”
“These people all knew how dangerous this situation was,” he continued, and their attempts to minimize, downplay, or dismiss the attack in the months since called to mind what
Meyers called “the Constanza test”.
To quote Seinfeld’s George Constanza: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
“But they didn’t believe it,” Meyers said. “Their texts show they were lying and they knew they were lying.”
Stephen Colbert
“The more we learn about the insurrection on January 6th, the more it becomes clear that we have two political parties in this country: you have the Democratic party, and the anti-democratic party,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday. “Because only one of these parties cares whether you get a vote in an election.”
The Late Show host pointed to the House vote this week to hold Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress after he reneged on a pledge to help the investigation into the attack. Only two Republicans voted in favor; “every other Republican, every other one, doesn’t want you to know what happened on January 6th,” said Colbert.
“The Republican caucus is an accessory to this coup,” he added, with more evidence in the form of the text messages sent to Meadows. The day after the siege, for example, one unnamed Republican lawmaker texted: “Yesterday was a terrible day … We tried everything we could in our objection to the six states. I’m sorry nothing worked.”
“Oh, so he regrets not being able to drown Lady Liberty in a bathtub,” Colbert remarked. “It’s like sending a sympathy card that says ‘my deepest condolences – that you lived. I was rooting for the tumor!’”
Trevor Noah
On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah took stock of pro sports leagues troubled by the Omicron variant. Since Monday, 65 NFL players have tested positive for Covid-19 (as of Wednesday night), the NHL postponed its ninth game, and the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers cancelled a practice session.
“You remember what happened last time, right?” Noah said. “One week we were all like, ‘huh, lots of NBA players getting Covid. And then the next week, we were all at home showering with our Amazon packages.”
“There are so many [NBA] players who have Covid, that I actually feel bad for all the players who don’t have it,” he added. “That’s one hell of a way to find out that everyone on the team was hanging out without you.”
But this could work out well for the fans, he joked, “because you know how deep down inside, when you’re at a game, you always hope secretly that the coaches are going to look up in the stands and be like, ‘hey, we need you to help us win this game?’”
“Well now, everyone is so short on players that might actually happen.”
Samantha Bee
And on Full Frontal, Samantha Bee ripped Mark Meadows for refusing to help Congress with its investigation into the events of 6 January, even after providing the House committee with 9,000 pages of records.
The materials included texts and emails encouraging investigations into voter fraud – “a phrase that’s basically the Republican safe-word”, Bee joked – and an unhinged PowerPoint presentation that outlined strategies for overturning the election. The 36page presentation also included conspiracy theories that China and Venezuela had seized control over US voting infrastructure. “In other words, the kind of emails that shouldn’t even make it past a Gmail spam filter, let alone to the chief of staff,” Bee said.
Meadows’s lawyer claimed he received the PowerPoint by email but did nothing with it, “which is the world war III version of claiming you ‘just didn’t see’ that invite to your in-laws’ third baby shower,” Bee said.
“And while it’s nice that Meadows likely didn’t pass it on to the president, it’s still terrifying that Trump supporters were able to soft pitch a coup with a Microsoft Office document,” she added. “PowerPoint shouldn’t be the cause of America’s downfall! That’s the responsibility of Facetune.”