Late-night TV hosts discussed Donald Trump’s latest allegations against Obama just days after he was referred to as “presidential” by many media outlets.
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah joked about the almost immediate shift in tone from the illusion of stability to a series of unhinged tweets.
“Just a week ago, the media was calling Donald Trump presidential,” he said. “Didn’t he learn anything from that? You know, the press was like, ‘Dude, you can trick us if you want, just talk nice,’ and still he was like, ‘Pass.’”
Trump takes to Twitter to accuse Obama of wiretapping him during the 2016 election. https://t.co/rL8ObWVawM pic.twitter.com/gosaO62yHB
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 7, 2017
He then played footage of Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaking about the claims on Sunday morning television. “As with most Trump scandals, the most fun part of the ride is watching his people try, and fail, to defend him,” he said.
It was a predictably failed interview, with Sanders referring the question back to the president. “You know the story’s bonkers when your spokesperson says: ‘He can speak for himself,’” he said.
Kellyanne Conway toed a similar disastrous line, claiming that as the president, Trump had intelligence that the rest of the world didn’t have. “I’ll agree with that: Trump has intelligence that I definitely do not,” Noah joked.
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also commented on the change in tone from Trump. “I was afraid he’d sold the timeshare in Crazytown,” he said. “Well, he’s baaaaaaack!”
He joked: “Things are moving so fast, I think I need a Dramamine,” and after looking at the early timestamp on Trump’s tweets, asked: “Who wakes up that angry?”
He also made note of Trump’s follow-up tweet to his wiretap allegations, given that he quickly moved on to criticize Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Apprentice ratings.
“First he alleges a scandal worse than Watergate then he immediately goes after Schwarzenegger,” he said. “It’s like if Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: ‘You know, Nixon’s a criminal, and The Six Million Dollar Man isn’t real, it’s all done with slow motion.’”
He then referred to Sean Spicer as “White House press secretary and man using a coupon on a first date”.
He also referenced reports that claim White House aides had to pacify Trump after the Jeff Sessions controversy by telling him about the revised travel ban in order to improve his mood. “Does the big angry man want to split up some Muslim families?” he joked. “I see a smile.”
But ultimately it was Trump’s own research of conservative sites that made him feel better. “It turns out that nobody’s better at pleasuring Trump than himself,” he said.
On Conan, Conan O’Brien assembled a spoof ad of Trump’s revised executive order restricting travel to the US from six Muslim-majority countries.
A voiceover claims: “Everything nervous white people loved about the travel ban with some incredible new features” before boasting about a more light-hearted typeface, stickers and a recipe for Jeff Sessions’ squirrel pie.
