Stephen Colbert: ‘Now we can binge-watch the end of America’
“Remember a couple years ago, when Trump first got into office, we were all so nervous that Donald Trump was some kind of sleeper agent who was gonna sell America out to a foreign power behind our backs?” Stephen Colbert asked on Thursday’s edition of The Late Show. “Well, it’s throwback Thursday.”
Colbert was reacting to the major news from Washington: the revelation that earlier this summer, a phone call between the president and an unidentified foreign leader, in which he made an unspecified “promise”, was “so troubling” that it prompted an intelligence official to file a formal whistleblower complaint.
On the one hand, Colbert said, “thank God Trump never keeps his promises”.
Still, the matter is a big deal. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community’s inspector general considered the matter an “urgent concern” – a distinction “high on the intelligence community threat level,” Colbert said, referring to his threat-level scale of “not a problem; uh oh!; Urgent concern; Chrissy Teigen attack”.
Furthermore, after the initial article on the whistleblower, the New York Times reported that the whistleblower complaint actually concerned a series of actions by Trump beyond one phone conversation with a foreign leader. “Oh, a series!” Colbert said. “Great – now we can binge-watch the end of America.”
Seth Meyers: ‘Could be anyone’
On Late Night, Seth Meyers took a closer look at the whistleblower complaint.
The story is still developing, Meyers said – it’s not revealed which leader Trump was speaking to on the phone, or what they were talking about. To help keep the “complicated” story straight, Meyers composed a helpful mnemonic device: “remember, it’s a Promise from the United States, made by Trump, to an International leader, but we do not know their Name.” (Putin, in case you need a reminder.)
“Could be anyone,” Meyers shrugged.
This is the first internal whistleblower complaint revealed to be about Trump, which surprised Meyers. “The way this guy behaves,” he said, “there should be literal whistleblowers following him everywhere he goes.”
Trevor Noah: ‘‘He’s dressed as Aladdin doing blackface’
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah discussed the news roiling Canadian politics: that Justin Trudeau has worn black or brown face on multiple occasions.
First, Noah looked at the photo that kicked off the firestorm – a photo from an Arabian Nights party in 2001, in which Trudeau wore an Aladdin costume and dark brown makeup. “There’s so many problems with this photo,” Noah said. “First of all, it’s obviously never OK to do blackface. And secondly, if you are going to darken your skin, at least get the color right. Trudeau isn’t dressed as Aladdin; he’s dressed as Aladdin doing blackface.”
Justin Trudeau’s blackface and brownface photos make for the worst #tbt imaginable. pic.twitter.com/RZ3wDuptN2
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 20, 2019
Moreover, “Trudeau didn’t need the blackface to make the costume work,” Noah said. “He’s in a full Aladdin outfit at an Arabian Nights themed party! No one was going to see him and be like, oh, white skin – are you the snowman from Frozen?”
After Time magazine first published the photo, Trudeau held a press conference to apologize, saying that he did not think it was racist at the time but now does, that he dresses overzealously for costume parties – and had also worn blackface for a costume in high school.
The revelation was rough, said Noah, and points to a larger issue. “When you look at Trudeau and all these new stories of blackface every day, at some point we have to admit that this problem is bigger than some people want to believe.” From Trudeau to the Virginia governor, Ralph Northam, to many, many frat party costumes, “it seems that when white people get their hands on brown makeup, they just cannot help themselves,” Noah said.
Which is why he proposed a “buyback program to get blackface off the streets”. Noah also half-ironically suggested “red flag laws – if you hear about your white friend talking about buying an afro wig for the school talent show, we need to stop that before it happens”.
Finally, he added: “For those people who already have a blackface photo that hasn’t come out yet, we need to have one day of amnesty where you can put it out online without getting cancelled.”
But the one day of amnesty was not a pass, he said. “Don’t use this as an excuse to make new blackface photos. I see you, white people.”
