Stephen Colbert on Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster: ‘Unprecedented humiliation’
Late-night hosts reacted to the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy from his position as speaker of the House, after a recall vote led by his fellow Republican Matt Gaetz and backed by every Democrat. “Seems like strange bedfellows between those two groups,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show, but in a Democratic meeting on Tuesday, the
California representative Adam Schiff quoted The Big Lebowski: Gaetz “isn’t wrong, he’s just an asshole”.
“He’s right. The douche abides,” Colbert added.
In January, Congress voted a record 15 times for McCarthy to get the speaker job. “But to remove him? Just one,” Colbert cheered. “That’s progress, Kev!”
It was the first time in the history of Congress that a speaker has been removed from their role. “This has never happened before, in the 247 years of our republic,” said Colbert solemnly. “So Kevin, congratulations, you made history. I’m sorry, I misread that: you are history.”
“It’s hard to see any politician come back from this kind of unprecedented humiliation,” he added. “Speaking of humiliation: Donald Trump,” who was in New York on Tuesday for his fraud trial, “which can’t be fun for him to sit there, since the judge already found him to have committed fraud,” Colbert explained.
“But his lawyers seem to be having a good time,” as one of them brought a gaming laptop to the trial. “She’s using her downtime to play Grand Theft Mara-Lago,” Colbert quipped.
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel recapped day two of Trump’s fraud trial in New York. On Monday, Trump’s lawyers said Mar-a-Lago was worth a billion dollars, but changed their estimate on Tuesday to $1.5bn. “It’s amazing how much your property value can increase when you just make up numbers in your head,” Kimmel laughed.
Kimmel also touched on McCarthy’s ouster. “This was an unlikely and historic team-up between far-right Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “You know how much you have to suck to get AOC and Matt Gaetz on the same side of something?”
The charge to remove McCarthy was led by “Florida Congress-vomit”
Matt Gaetz, who “hasn’t been this excited since he wandered into the changing room in Forever 21”.
“Kevin McCarthy says he will not run for speaker again, which surprised a lot of people, including me,” Kimmel added. “I mean, he’s a Republican. You lose a vote, you just say you won the vote. Get with the program, man!”
Seth Meyers
On the first day of Trump’s civil fraud trial in New York, the New York Post reported that a large takeout order of McDonald’s was delivered to the courthouse. “Wow, I knew he was in trouble, but I didn’t know they were seeking the death penalty,” Seth Meyers quipped on Late Night.
As for Trump’s lawyers’ claim that Mar-a-Lago would sell for at least $1bn – “I’m sure he could get that just for what’s in the shower,” Meyers joked, referring to the trove of classified documents Trump illegally kept at his Florida resort.
In other legal news, jury selection began this week in the trial of disgraced crypto-entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried
“which is surprising, because by the looks of him, he already got the electric chair”, said Meyers.
And the fast food chain Taco Bell announced that it planned to add breakfast tacos to their menu for the first time. “Finally, some good news for people who wake up still drunk,” Meyers joked.
Jimmy Fallon
And on the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon faux-mourned McCarthy’s brief term as speaker of the House, which lasted a mere nine months. “Nine months? Even Aaron Rodgers is like, ‘Damn, that was fast.’ Nine months? I’ve been to Phish concerts longer than that,” he said.
In Trump news, after a day in legal proceedings for his civil fraud trial in New York, the former president posted a sketch of Jesus sitting next to him in the courtroom on Truth Social. “When Jesus saw what he posted, he was like, ‘Oh my God …’” Fallon joked.
As for Trump ordering McDonald’s to the court house – “Trump eating McDonald’s is not really news, I don’t think,” said Fallon. “Now if Trump orders a quinoa bowl from Sweetgreen, that’s news.”
Trump also complained that his trial did not include a jury, even though that’s because his lawyers never requested one. “To be fair, Trump can’t have a jury of his peers,” said Fallon. “Where are they going to get 12 bankrupt former reality hosts?
“You know it’s not good when you’re missing the legal competence of Rudy Giuliani.”
about what people think from there, rather than lived experience or polling. Rationally, you’d think MPs could read the polling and see that Truss and Braverman are absolutely toxic. They have the reverse Midas touch.”
The polls are so unambiguous on Truss: she left office as the least popular prime minister since YouGov was founded, and her ratings remain dazzlingly low: 69% negative, 11% positive (according to that pollster, but this is replicated across the board). Fame, though, is a different matter: 97% “have heard of” her.
The view from the podium might be a bit more hard-boiled: from Truss’s imaginary fiscal headroom to Kemi Badenoch’s imaginary racial equality to Braverman’s increasingly rabid anti-migrant rhetoric, we could be witnessing the open auditions for leader of the opposition. They might just be so sure, now, that Labour has it in the bag that they’ve ceased to focus on the forthcoming general election at all, and are concentrating only on what comes next.
“It’s a tragic reflection on their own capacities in their current roles, to think: ‘Yup, the game’s up,’” Spence says. But he acknowledges the truth: “Sunak understands what is required to win over the Tory party, and for the Tory party to win over the country. But it’s far too late, and he is not that cavalier sort of person who can riff off the moment. We see how angry he gets in interviews.” We could argue for longer about whether Sunak does understand those things, but there’s this obvious, unsquarable circle: where a Conservative politician does have those devilmay-care instincts that the voters love, it’s because they just haven’t given the matter, or the country, any serious thought. In order to describe a Conservative agenda that appeals to Conservatives, let alone to swing voters, they have to imagine a world other than the permacrisis one we’re living in. Bale says: “I’m not so sure there’s been an absolutely huge ideological shift: the idea that the Conservative party used to be full of moderate liberals is nonsense. It’s been a bog standard Thatcherite party for a long time, and most MPs are bog standard Thatcherites.” The problem is Thatcherism: we can no longer afford it.
The Tory party is the only one that doesn’t release figures about its numbers or composition to the Electoral Commission, but from what researchers do know, it is probably above 100,000 members but not by much, middle-aged to elderly, almost entirely white, normally comfortably off, almost entirely in the south of England. There’s little evidence of Ukip-entryism to sway the agenda; if they’ve changed, it’s of their own accord.
And MPs have changed, in another important regard. “The Conservative party of old used to be all about power,” says Bale. “You’d have had to get them out of Downing Street by their fingernails. They would never have made the mistake that Labour made in 2010 and let the Lib Dems wander off. Now, there are a lot of Conservatives who have gone the way of some Labour purists, and think: ‘A period of opposition could be good, it would allow us to reenergise ourselves, get back to true Conservatism.”
The funny thing is, as I gawp at this spectacle: a political figure who should be a zombie, walking among the rest, more alive, more feted, I realise that I can’t leave Truss alone either. I’m still wondering what her peculiar, emptyyet-loaded speeches really mean, still thinking about where her financial backing comes from, still ruminating on her end days (which were indivisible from her start days), still worrying about what dark mischief she’ll make next. I’ve given her far more thought than I ever have Sunak. In her feckless zeal, her bare assertions, her shamelessness, she just seems to embody the age better than the others.
You’d think MPs could read the polling and see that Truss and Braverman are absolutely toxic
Political scientist Tim Bale
songwriters and Kacey Musgraves just co-wrote and sang on a number one hit.”
Country music has always had tensions and debate, but perhaps the reasons the bigoted voices are so loud in “this extreme moment might be a sign of things really being rattled where we can plant the seeds for positive cultural change”, says Dr Royster. “There are already ways artists of color, LGBTQ+ folk and women are surviving in the industry partly by joining together and creating spaces like the Love Rising concert and the Black Opry.”
But she also believes white country artists could be doing more to force change: “I really do think it’s important for artists, especially white artists, to use the space of power and privilege they have – like Maren did – to talk about what’s wrong with the industry. When Morris says, ‘I hope I’m not the only one’, I don’t think she is the only one and that gives me hope.”
rally more likely to vote Conservative. The interesting, or maybe confronting thing about considering the dog person personality is that, truthfully, I still think of it as just being human. I accept that cat people exist, but not in the way I accept, say, that introverts exist: I find introversion fascinating and mysterious. Objectively, there’s something admirable and maybe profound in having something better to do than show off and chat all the time. Whereas cat people, I think are kidding themselves.
They’ve met dogs, right?
something that should be taken lightly,” he says.
Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, says that social media platforms have boosted engagement with extreme ideas. “Conspiracies can appear ridiculous to non-believers, whether it’s David Icke’s claims about a reptilian takeover or QAnon claims about a global cabal of paedophiles. But what makes this dangerous is that someone can start by sympathising with David Icke’s attacks on ‘the establishment’ and end up buying into his grotesque conspiracies about the Holocaust,” he says.
As a former conspiracist, Lee hopes he will be better equipped to help people still caught up in these beliefs. Rather than antagonising them, he is able to take a more empathetic approach. “These ideas aren’t alien to me – they are second nature. Most conspiracists want a better world. They think something bad has happened, and they want to expose it. I think if you can lean into that with them, and say: ‘Yes, I understand why that would worry you, but perhaps it’s not actually what’s happening.’ I think that’s a better way to approach it.”
He says it takes time and energy to help people dismantle the many layers of complex theories. Concerned about the implications for free speech, he is not certain that greater online regulation is part of the answer. “I usually tell friends and family members: ‘You are the best person to do it. They will trust and respect you more than any stranger who challenges them, so you are going to have to familiarise yourself with their beliefs. You also know how far you can push them before they get annoyed, don’t cross that line. Keep them close, be respectful and remind them that you value their concerns’.”
So far, Lee’s attempts to save others have had limited success. He has been ostracised by his former online community. “My first intention was just to bring my friends back out of the rabbit hole – that backfired on me. They have completely cut me off, treated me like a pariah.” Some have suggested that he has been paid off by “the elites”, but he is determined to persist. “There are friends and family of people caught up in this who contact me to say: ‘Thank you for sharing this: you really believed in all this craziness, you were super deep but you came out – and this gives us hope.’”
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A 2020 poll found that 17% of Americans believed ‘a group of Satanworshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media’
the speech were the staple themes of migration, motoring and woke culture, as well as cheap jibes at alleged “rip-off degrees”. In parts this felt like a standard monologue on the rightwing TV channel GB News.
The crisis in British society, of which the 2016 Brexit vote was a symptom, is ongoing. The Conservative party cannot reconcile voters’ desire for better public services with its own small-state instincts. Mr Sunak’s hero is the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, who endorsed him in last summer’s
Tory leadership race, suggesting the Thatcherite “election-winning formula” was to tackle inflation by shrinking the state and then offering tax cuts.
Mr Sunak seems to be following such a strategy. But the deeper the malaise that Britons feel, the more transformational the solutions that are needed. These are not on offer. That might explain why the Tory vote share remains stubbornly behind Labour’s, despite high-profile announcements on net zero and immigration. Income inequality in the UK is among the highest in Europe. Mr Sunak is right that the current governing model won’t be tolerated, but that is because too few benefit from it and too many are failed by it. The prescriptions outlined in his speech today will not solve that central problem.