Late-night hosts discuss voter concerns about Joe Biden’s age as Donald Trump faces numerous ongoing trials, with his first criminal trial scheduled for 25 March in New York.
Seth Meyers
“I don’t think we as a nation have fully grappled yet with just how unprecedented and norm-shattering this election is going to be,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday evening. “One of our two major party candidates is going to be on trial, perhaps in multiple jurisdictions, during the campaign. He’ll have to Zoom in to his rallies from the courthouse.”
On Thursday, a Manhattan judge scheduled Trump’s hush-money trial to start on 25 March. “That makes sense, the Farmer’s Almanac says spring doesn’t start until the Republican nominee for president goes on trial for paying hush money to a porn star,” Meyers joked.
The Late Night host also touched on Trump’s many forgetful moments on the campaign trail, such as repeatedly messing up rival Nikki Haley’s name. “He sounds like Amazon Echo after you drop it in the toilet then dry it off by sticking it in the microwave until it catches on fire,” said Meyers.
“Of course, this is not the first addled thing Trump has said or done,” he continued. “The guy glitches on names, dates, people, places, three-syllable words, two-syllable words, one-syllable words, who the president is, who he ran against, what city he’s in, how magnets work, how toilets work, how windmills work, how bleach works, how to spell his wife’s name, how to spell his own name, and how to say what country he lives in.
“Republicans would like us all to believe both that 81-year-old Biden is in cognitive decline and that 77-year-old Trump is somehow sharper than ever,” he explained, though disputed the comparison. “Yes, Joe Biden is 81. Yes, he forgets names and dates,” and 86% of voters are worried about his age. “It’s on Biden to prove them wrong and ease their concerns. He’s a politician, and that’s politics. That’s his job.
“Trump, on the other hand, is very obviously addled, and in much more dangerous ways,” he concluded.
Stephen Colbert
“Once again, it was an insane day for America because it was a regular day for Donald Trump,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, as the former president had not one but two trials on Thursday – one in New York, one in Georgia. “The only way to follow all the action was to have multiple TVs. That’s why I watched all the proceedings today at a Buffalo Wild Wings,” he joked.
That’s not even getting to Trump’s $370m civil fraud trial in New York, the January 6 Capitol attack trial in Washington DC, the classified documents case in Florida, Colorado’s attempt to throw him off the ballot for insurrection, and his appeal of the verdict in the E Jean Carroll defamation case, in which a jury already found that Trump committed sexual assault.
“And yet, despite all this, people want to hire this maniac to be president,” said an exasperated Colbert. “In light of all that, I’d like to make a brief public service announcement: this is fucked up.
“Look, I know how numb we’ve become, but it’s not normal!” he continued. “No other candidate for the presidency has ever had to pause his campaign to defend himself in multiple courts! And I would like to point out that in all seven of his cases, no one doubts that he did these things. We’re just waiting around patiently to find out if the wheels of justice will grind fast enough for there to be any consequences.
“And the media is covering it like it’s any other political story!” he said. “Like it’s all a horse race. But in this horse race, one of the horses is old. While one of the horses is old, has foot and mouth disease, and keeps quoting Horse Hitler.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“It’s really, finally happening: an actual criminal trial against Donald Trump will begin on March 25,” said Jimmy Kimmel in Los Angeles. “And this is for the least serious of his many indictments,” for violating campaign finance laws to pay off the porn star Stormy Daniels.
“He’s too cheap to pay the hush money himself,” Kimmel laughed. “He’s so dumb. Between the $130,000 to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 to Karen McDougal, no one in history has ever paid this much for 35 combined seconds of sex.
“He’s got an interesting defense,” Kimmel added. “On this one, he’s claiming that paying women to be quiet is not a crime. It’s basically a porking ticket.”
Kimmel also anticipated the upcoming verdict in Trump’s civil fraud trial, in which he could be penalized as much as $370m. “If he has to pay $370m, we’re about to see an explosion unlike any we’ve ever witnessed before,” said Kimmel. “I would love to be a fly dodging ketchup bottles on the wall for that moment, I really would.
“If this trial has taught us anything, it’s that Donald Trump definitely doesn’t have $370m,” he added. “It might be time to fire up a new round of digital trading cards.”
