Stephen Colbert
It was the week before Christmas, the beginning of the final week of Late Show episodes for the year, “and it’s beginning to look a lot like fascism, thanks to Donald Trump”, said Stephen Colbert on Monday evening.
Specifically, at a campaign stop in New Hampshire over the weekend, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country”.
“That is absolutely disgusting, also not true,” said Colbert. “The blood of our country is not being poisoned by immigrants. It’s being poisoned by dipping pizza in ranch dressing.”
Many pointed out, accurately, that the term “blood poisoning” was used by Hitler in his manifesto Mein Kampf. “Now as you can imagine, people are upset that he’s quoting a genocidal maniac in his stump speeches,” Colbert explained. But a Mike Pence aide came to his defense, saying: “I think it’s highly unlikely that Donald Trump has ever read Mein Kampf.”
“Right. Because it’s a book,” Colbert deadpanned. “He probably got the version with pictures, Mein First Kampf.”
“Obviously, Trump’s words are indefensible,” he added, “so Lindsey Graham defended them.”
Speaking on the Sunday shows, the South Carolina senator pushed away criticism of the former president’s rhetoric: “I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right.”
“Yeah, what language our leaders use does not and has never mattered,” Colbert joked. “That’s why the constitution starts with ‘We the ploo-plees of the Untided Yabba Dabba Doo’.”
In other Trump news, one of his former lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, was ordered by the Georgia court to pay $148m to two former election workers he defamed. The massive verdict was over $100m more than the plaintiffs sought. “It’s a situation known in legal terms as hahahahaha,” said a delighted Colbert.
It’s unclear how much of that verdict Giuliani will actually pay, as his net worth is unknown, but it’s likely he needs cash. “He needs to stop making videos on Cameo and start making videos on OnlyFans,” Colbert joked.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also reacted to Trump’s use of fascist “blood poisoning” rhetoric on the campaign trail.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country? You look like something that would show up under a microscope at a toxicology lab,” he retorted. “I’m not sure you should be talking about poisoning anyone’s blood when you look like the corpse of a mobster who just got fished out of the water next to the FDR.
“It’s not just rhetoric,” he continued. “Trump and his goons are already drawing up very real plans to revive his Muslim ban, expel asylum seekers, round up migrants by the millions in sweeping raids and build detention camps to house them.”
“But his sycophants on rightwing TV are once again trotting out the same excuses they’ve already used to dismiss Trump’s worst offenses for years now,” he added, pointing to the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, who chalked up outrage over Trump’s comments to people overreacting.
“They’re not even trying to do that thing any more where they say ‘what Trump really meant was … ’ and then translate his fascism into more polite words,” Meyers explained. “They’re basically saying: ‘Hey, if it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it could be anything!’
“Now they’re just telling us not to listen to his words at all,” he continued. “Next they’re going to tell us that watching Trump’s rallies is actually anti-Trump. Fox News is just going to put up a chyron during Trump rallies that says ‘Quick, change the channel!’”
Meyers also celebrated the verdict against Giuliani in the Georgia election workers’ defamation case, which awarded $148m to the plaintiffs, well above their ask. “They basically took the maximum, and put a 1 in front of it,” he said. “Which if you ask me, is the funniest possible choice. They took one look at Rudy and said: ‘There’s no way he can afford to pay $48m, so fuck it, let’s add another hundo.’”
