Trevor Noah
“If you were keeping up with the news today, you know that it was more chaotic than free cocaine day at Dave and Buster’s,” said Trevor Noah on Thursday’s Daily Show. There were simply too many stories vying for attention, which Noah skimmed in a segment called “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That”.
“If you’re friends with a government ethics expert and you’re wondering why their head randomly exploded into little pieces today,” Noah began, it’s probably because they saw that Donald Trump announced that his Florida golf resort will host next year’s G7 summit. The arrangement violates ethics rules on profiting off foreign governments but, as Noah noted, “there’s nothing Trump won’t do to profit off the presidency. I bet you he’s going to be outside his own impeachment trial just scalping tickets.”
One scandal in a day could doom a president. Today, Trump said f*ck it, we’re going SEVEN scandals. pic.twitter.com/YY5qYGcCrF
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 18, 2019
Under normal circumstances, “we would spend all our time talking about how shady it is that Trump is forcing world leaders to host the G7 summit at his golf club that he makes money from”, Noah said.
But yesterday was not a normal day, and it’s not a normal presidency. “Because while he’s inviting foreign leaders to his Miami golf club, American leaders are storming out of the White House,” Noah said in reference to Trump’s meeting with Democrats in Washington. The meeting spiraled downward as both Trump and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, described each other as having a “meltdown”.
This was overshadowed, however, by Mike Pence’s trip to Turkey, where the vice-president negotiated a five-day ceasefire on the Turkish invasion of northern Syria. (Trump virtually facilitated the move when he surprise removed US troops last week, abandoning America’s Kurdish allies.)
“If we had the time, we would be discussing how disingenuous it is of Trump to claim that this is a peace deal when in fact the Kurds just got screwed over,” said Noah. “Because the deal is that they have five days to leave the land, and then Turkey gets the land.”
The ceasefire “doesn’t sound like a deal”, Noah continued. “It sounds like the kind of deal I had with my high school bully – I would give him my lunch money, and he would give me a black eye. Win-win.”
Finally, the acting White House chief of staff and “Excel spreadsheet come to life”, Mick Mulvaney, held a press conference and “shocked everyone in the room” by directly contradicting Trump and confirming his quid pro quo in pressuring the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to dig up dirt on a major political rival. Mulvaney said “we do this all the time”, and people should “get over it”.
“Everyone must get over it?” a shocked Noah asked. “Just get over it, everybody does it, so this is just locker room corruption?”
In 24 hours, Noah concluded, “we have Trump hosting the G7 at his golf club, Turkey getting the greatest deal of all time, no quid pro quo but also quid pro quo, a showdown in the White House” and the resignation of the energy secretary, Rick Perry, which Noah didn’t even have time to discuss.
“This might be the true genius of Donald Trump,” he said. “Because you realize with one scandal, you get kicked out of office. But with seven in one day? Ain’t nobody got time for that.”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel started with the shocking press conference by Mulvaney, in which he said the US hinges aid on specific requests “all the time”. “So all the bad stuff they’ve been saying the president didn’t do, now they’re saying he did it and he does it all the time?” Kimmel said. “Their defense has gone from ‘if the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit’ to ‘give my back my glove!’”
Kimmel sensed a similar shamelessness in Trump’s announcement that his golf resort in Florida will host next year’s G7 summit. “The president is generously renting his golf club out to all the leaders of the world, because of course he is – he doesn’t care any more,” Kimmel said. “He’s just like, yeah we’re hosting it at my golf resort and guess what? A round’s a million bucks.”
Kimmel also touched on Pence’s trip to Turkey for the five-day ceasefire; Trump “took a victory lap” and said the deal wouldn’t have happened without him. “He’s right,” Kimmel said, “the deal would have never been made without him because before he pulled the troops, there was no fire to cease.”
To recap: “Mike Pence flew to Turkey to negotiate an agreement wherein Turkey gets everything they want and the United States gives it to them. Mission accomplished,” Kimmel concluded.
“And congratulations to the vice-president – he will be getting an extra scoop of kibble into his bowl tonight, I have no doubt.”
