Kimmel on Pence’s ‘stocking stuffer’ book: ‘Hang it on the mantle, just like Pence almost was’
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel anticipated Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday evening, hours before the former president officially announced his campaign “surrounded by dozens of his closest friends and thousands of classified documents” at Mar-a-Lago.
“A lot of Republicans wish that this monster they helped create would just go away, but he just keeps coming back,” Kimmel said. “He’s like herpes – once your party has them, they just keep coming back. You can’t get rid of them. All you can do is try to shorten the outbreaks.”
One person not invited to the Mara-Lago announcement was Trump’s “former right handjob – I mean man” Mike Pence, whose memoir debuted on Tuesday. The former vice-president sat for an interview with ABC News and was asked if Trump ever apologized for his role in the riot which threatened Pence’s life, to which Pence said: “Not in so many words, but in sentiment he did.”
“So the answer is no, he did not. He didn’t,” said Kimmel.
Pence added that he urged Trump, in the days after January 6, to “turn to Jesus right now, believing in my heart he could find the same comfort I was finding.”
“Can you imagine telling Donald Trump he should turn to Jesus?” Kimmel laughed. “Even Jesus is like, ‘Don’t tell him to turn to me! I want no part in any of this.’”
Pence’s book, So Help Me God, “makes a great stocking stuffer,” said Kimmel. “You can hang it on the mantle, just like Mike Pence almost was.”
Trevor Noah
“In the least surprising plot twist ever, a woman who ran on a platform of denying election results is now denying her election results,” said Trevor Noah of Trump acolyte Kari Lake, who officially lost her close race for Arizona governor on Monday.
“In a way, I bet she’s relieved that she lost,” Noah added. “Because if she won, then what? She would’ve had to deny herself? It would’ve shattered her reality. It would be like TLC meeting a scrub and liking him.
“This is a lot for Kari Lake,” he joked, “so please, please, let’s give her some space as she goes through the five stages of Republican grief: denial, denial, denial, pooping in Nancy Pelosi’s office, and denial.”
Lake’s loss confirmed that no elec
tion deniers won a governor or secretary of state position in a swing state, “which is huge for democracy”, said Noah. “This is just like in those horror films when they kill the monster, and then he never comes back again. You did it Democrats! Now go leave the knife on the counter and go take a sexy shower upstairs.”
With the midterms finally over, “it’s time for the parties to govern,” Noah concluded. “Nah, I’m shitting you, that’s not going to happen. It’s actually time for the parties to campaign for the next election.
“I don’t know why, but America loves to campaign,” he added. “It’s like seeing someone who’s only interested in foreplay.”
Stephen Colbert
The Late Show taped before Trump’s official announcement for 2024 at Mar-a-Lago, “so the FBI could’ve burst in and seized his teleprompter,” said Stephen Colbert. “But everyone is expecting him to announce his third presidential bid. Yes, it’s the third time – or, as it’s known at his house, the Melania.
“I want everybody to breathe,” he added, as Trump “might not even be the GOP nominee! It could be Ron DeSantis.”
Especially as Trump’s team tries to dig him out from under a pile of lawsuits. A filing in a suit against Twitter argued that “crackpot ideas sometimes turn out to be true” to advance more baseless claims about Hunter Biden and election fraud. “Well said! All great discoveries start as conspiracy theories,” Colbert deadpanned. “Thomas Edison only invented the lightbulb so he could finally see that Sasquatch sneaking up on him.”
A separate legal filing claimed that the president gets to decide whether White House papers are “personal documents” and that Trump “had decided that all the records he took to Mar-a-Lago were in fact his personal property”.
“That is the legal argument of a toddler,” said Colbert. “‘Your honor, my client pleads: mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, I want a balloon, I want a balloon, mine.”