Late-night hosts recapped a weekend of nationwide protests over the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer as Donald Trump made a social media post referring to himself as the “acting president” of Venezuela.
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart wasted no time expressing outrage from the Daily Show desk on Monday evening, after a particularly dark week for US news. “What the fuck is happening?” he exclaimed. “What the fuck is happening in this country? From Minnesota, to Venezuela, to Iran, to Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia.
“We are on the Donald Trump Gravitron,” he concluded. “We don’t know what up or down is. We just know it feels like we’re all gonna vomit. Each moment brings another event with cataclysmic implications and consequences, and the guy at the center of it, the instigator, the catalyst of all this chaos and confusion, he’s just out there TGIF-ing it.”
Stewart later broke down the double standards for the administration’s view of law enforcement – how Trump pardoned 1,500 participants from the January 6 attack on the Capitol, while his administration continues to refer to Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis mother who was fatally shot by ICE last week, as “highly disrespectful” and a “deranged lunatic”.
“The important lesson here is what?” he asked, before playing a clip of Megyn Kelly, who argued that Good “brought it upon herself”.
“We are in a confusing, dark place,” Stewart said. “This is where, quite frankly, rule of law and institutions are kind of an important framework. But now that those are gone, what’s our North Star?”
Stewart answered his own question with a clip of Trump saying that his “own morality” was the only check on his power. “It couldn’t be more clear: in America today, Donald Trump is the sun, and if you revolve around him and worship him, his warmth shines upon you,” Stewart said. “But if you do not support him – if you live in the darkness of what I guess we will now refer to from now on as ‘blue states’ – fearing the day he turns his terrible wrath toward you, whether you’re a single human woman on a sidestreet somewhere in Minneapolis, or a sovereign nation that happens to have land and resources that we, a larger sovereign nation, think we also might want.
“So his people are making a bet: that adhering to a principle of forced compliance and coercion will give us a more stable and prosperous America, than a principle of shared alliance and common interest,” he concluded. “It’s kind of a tough bet, because I read somewhere, I don’t know where, that people have inalienable rights granted by a creator, not a king.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also looked at the fallout from an ICE agent killing Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, sparking national outrage over the agency’s deployment in US cities. “We have Trump’s ongoing war in Minneapolis, where his response to the intense outrage following the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent is to send in even more ICE agents,” Kimmel recounted. “Because when you’re trying to put out a grease fire, what do you do? You throw more grease on it, right?”
Kimmel celebrated that “thousands and thousands of patriotic Americans” protested about Good’s killing over the weekend. “In Minneapolis, they turned out in 16 degrees,” he said. And yet, Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, claimed that Good was a “domestic terrorist”.
“This is what they want us to believe,” Kimmel said. “They need to paint anyone who protests as violent and dangerous, even a mom in a Honda. They need antifa to be real so they can call in the military and cancel elections and declare martial law. And, ironically, while the White House is trying to squash the protests here, the Lie-atollah is said to be mulling over a military strike on Iran to support the protesters there.
“I have an idea,” he added. “Send all those guys from ICE out of Minneapolis to Iran. They could help!”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped outrage over Good’s murder with a clip of a Minneapolis protester that appeared on Fox News: “I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that they’re kidnapping people,” the man said. “I’m disgusted that they murdered an innocent human being. And yeah, the entire thing just absolutely abhors me – this has to stop immediately.”
“I’m sorry, but how dare you go on Fox News and state such a normal, reasonable opinion!” Meyers said with feigned outrage. “If you keep this up, the president’s going to be so sad he’ll walk over to the window and never come back!”
The host joked that the interviewee was a “paid, leftwing agitator” and part of a “shadowy, far-left conspiracy”, whose weapon of choice was a small bell the man said was given to him by a fellow protester.
“That should tell you everything you need to know about the situation,” said Meyers. “One side is showing up with guns, and the other side is showing up with bells. And not just any bells – tiny bells. I mean, what dangerous weapons are these paid agitators going to brandish next? A quilt and a ball of yarn?”
Stephen Colbert
And on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert decried the justice department’s criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair. “Nothing to worry about, just a direct attack on our independent monetary system which props up the global economy,” Colbert quipped. “If you would just excuse me for just a moment here,” he said, faking a phone call to “liquidate all my holdings into bronze weaponry and fertile goats”.
“This is so bad that last night Powell, a man known for being extremely careful about making any public statements, released this hostage video,” he added.
In the video, Powell warned that “the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
“Well said, sir,” Colbert responded. “Drily said, like if words were beef jerky – snap into a Slim Jerome. But well said nonetheless.
“Even in a moment of crisis like this, Powell is a very serious man,” he continued. “That video is as hair-on-fire as he ever gets. You should hear him talk dirty.”
On Monday, top economic experts endorsed an open letter decrying the threat of criminal charges as “how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly”. The letter was signed by every living former Fed chair.
“OK, but what do they know about money?” Colbert joked. “Have they ever correctly identified a giraffe on a cognitive test? Have they?!”
