Trevor Noah: ‘Why still act surprised when Trump does Trump stuff?’
“Ever since Donald Trump announced that he would be running for re-election in 2024, many have been wondering ‘will this finally be the moment when he becomes presidential?’” Trevor Noah mocked on Monday’s Daily Show. “Well, judging by his recent dinner party with Kanye West, the computer says NO.”
Noah recapped reports that the former president recently hosted a dinner party at Mar-a-Lago for Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
“First of all, this whole story sounds like the set-up to one of those jokes that your uncle tells you at dinner, you know?” Noah laughed. “Like ‘OK, so a racist billionaire, an antisemitic rapper and a white supremacist walk into a bar …’”
“Secondly, why do journalists still act surprised when Donald Trump does Donald Trump stuff ?” he continued, referencing numerous segments expressing outrage over the meeting. “Trump having dinner with Nazis is not outrageous. If he had dinner with vegetables, that would be outrageous.”
According to Ye, Trump became upset when the rapper asked him to be his running mate for 2024. “The fact that Trump got so mad at Kanye just shows you where his priorities are,” said Noah. “He has no problem hosting a guy who wants to go ‘deathcon 3 on the Jews’ or a Holocaust denier who he brought to dinner with him whom he got along with. But if you ever suggest that he should be number two on someone’s ticket, Trump will be like, ‘you disgust me, sir. Talk like that has no place in America.’”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also discussed the dinner party between Trump, Ye and Fuentes. “I can’t imagine having dinner with someone so disgusting, and you have no idea which of those three guys I’m talking about,” he said.
Fuentes has a particularly appalling record – he has spread antisemitic conspiracies, attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 and the Stop the Steal rally on January 6, and is considered a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League. “That is the alt-right EGOT, as in ‘he-got zero hugs as a child,’” Colbert joked.
The meeting has become a “he-said, Ye-said” affair, Colbert added, after Ye said Trump became upset after he was asked to be Ye’s running mate in 2024. “You asked him to be your vice-president?” Colbert marveled. “How would that even work? Can you send a mob to hang yourself ?
“So that’s Ye’s story, but the former president apparently attended a different, completely insane dinner,” posting on Truth Social afterwards that he and Ye “got along great” and that the rapper “expressed no anti-Semitism”.
“Not sure that helps – ‘I had a lovely dinner with Jeffery Dahmer, we got along great, left with all my organs,’” Colbert joked.
Trump also put out a statement on Fuentes, saying the dinner was supposed to be “Kanye and me only” and that Fuentes was “a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about”.
“OK, I’m not sure ‘I was only scheduled to have dinner with one famous antisemite’ is the defense he thinks it is,” Colbert mused.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel mocked the “meeting of the mindless” at Mar-a-Lago. “You know this one was bad because Trump posted not one but three messages on his imaginary social media site trying to distance himself,” he explained.
“Only Donald Trump would defend himself by saying ‘I was only planning to eat with one antisemite, OK?” Kimmel laughed.
Kimmel was particularly interested in the moment Ye asked Trump to be his vice-president for his 2024 presidential campaign. “I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the ketchup-colored walls for that conversation,” he said. “That moment where Kanye asks Trump to be his running mate? No amount of money I wouldn’t give to have seen that.
“It’s terrifying to think of Trump as president again, but it’s amazing to think of him as vice-president,” he added. “Imagine him nodding and clapping during the standing ovation, politely sitting down and standing up. We get to watch him die inside every minute of every day.”
In a separate statement, Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was nor that he was coming to dinner. “Which is worse?” Kimmel wondered. “Having the guy over for dinner, or having no idea you’re letting a racist random into a house that was until very recently full of unguarded top secret documents?”