Late-night hosts recapped the many vile leaked messages from a Young Republicans group chat and Donald Trump’s ongoing Fox News-fueled delusions.
Jimmy Kimmel
“It’s hard to imagine, but one day this avalanche of insanity we get buried under, each day deeper and deeper than the next, will one day be taught in history books in every place other than Florida,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening. “What a stupid time to be alive.”
To wit, Kimmel cited a Daily Beast report that Trump’s inner circle has become “alarmed” by the impact of Fox News on his decision-making. “Trump officials became concerned when Trump asked if he could get a reverse mortgage on the White House and one of those Terry Bradshaw walk-in tubs,” Kimmel joked.
The report noted that Trump probably sent the national guard to Portland, Oregon, based on footage he saw on Fox News of the Black Lives Matter protests from summer 2020, mistaking them for current unrest. “He still might think that’s happening in real time,” said Kimmel. “He’s on a five-year delay from the rest of us.
“Trump’s inner circle knows just how dangerous the incessant misinformation from Fox News can be, because they all worked there 10 months ago,” he continued. “It is frightening to know that the president of the United States is being briefed on world events by the same source as everyone at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport Chili’s To-Go.”
But “one thing you can say about Donald Trump though: he has a vivid imagination,” he said. “He has created a dangerous organization to get the old people excited and fired up, a supervillain called antifa. And the reason we know that antifa is organized against the government is because their matching signs indicate that they are somehow in league with Kinko’s, or something.”
On Fox News, Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, falsely claimed “thousands” of protesters had signs that were “pre-bought, pre-put together – they’re organized, and someone is funding them”. She also threatened: “We’re going to get to the funding of antifa, we’re going to get to root of antifa, and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos in Portland and all these other cities across our country.”
“And if we can’t find them, we’re going to pretend that we did,” Kimmel added.
Kimmel made one thing clear: “There’s no chaos in Portland. None. There’s no chaos in Chicago. There was no chaos in Los Angeles. They’re pretending there’s chaos as pretense for a military takeover.” And he once again asked for viewers to submit videos of non-chaos in these cities under the hashtag #showmeyourhellhole – “and maybe you too can help educate our president on what is happening in the country that he runs.”
Stephen Colbert
Nine months into the second Trump presidency, “it feels like we’re about to give birth to an unvaccinated porcupine,” Stephen Colbert joked on the Late Show. “Every day, he finds disturbing new ways to undermine our norms.”
And on Wednesday, the Republican National Committee chair, Joe Gruters, revealed that Trump prefers to combine his McDonald’s hamburger and filet-o-fish entrees. “I can’t help but feel for everyone who has to fly with the president,” said Colbert. “Imagine being stuck on a 12-hour flight with an old man hot-boxing you with filet-o-farts.”
“That’s the light part of tonight’s monologue,” he added. Because this week, Politico published a report based on thousands of private messages between leaders of the Young Republicans organization full of offensive rhetoric. “OK, look, I know politics can be rough and tumble, but how offensive could these texts be?” said Colbert. “It’s not like they wrote ‘I like Hitler.’”
In fact, someone did write “I love Hitler.”
“That is a tough one to spin,” Colbert joked, mocking the chat – “What? I was talking about Pete Hitler and his honky tonk bluegrass band. You’re telling me there’s another Hitler?”
In 2,900 pages worth of texts, the Young Republicans sent each other an array of slurs, joked about enslavement and made disparaging comments about Jewish people, women, Black people and other minorities. One also texted: “If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked fr fr [for real].”
JD Vance, naturally, downplayed the language, dismissing the report as “kids do stupid things, especially young boys”.
However, the group’s minimum age requirement is 18, and some members of the chat were up to 40 years old. “Cause nothing says young like getting your first routine colonoscopy,” Colbert quipped.
