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    John Oliver on the US election: ‘Despair doesn’t help anything’

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    “It has been a rough week,” said John Oliver on Sunday evening, days after the majority of American voters elected Donald Trump to a second term as president, “which is, to put it mildly, not what I was personally hoping would happen. And honestly, in Trump’s victory speech, he couldn’t seem to believe it either.”Oliver played a clip from Trump’s characteristically rambling victory speech, in which he boasted: “We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing … Look what happened. Is this crazy?”“Yeah, it is crazy,” Oliver answered. “It’s really fucking crazy. He’s basically one sentence away from saying, ‘I mean, you guys saw what I did, right? And you still voted for this. That doesn’t make any sense.’“I know being a shambling verbal mess is part of Trump’s brand,” he added, “but it is still incredible to see an incoming president ad-lib a victory speech with the same energy as the best man who didn’t realize he had to give a toast.”Oliver then looked into the blame game entertained by those disappointed by Kamala Harris’s loss. “People are pointing the finger in all directions, from Latino voters to young men to Joe Rogan,” he said. “You can basically play your own ‘wheel of blame’ and generally make sure it lands on whoever you were mad at in the first place. And I’ll be honest, I get the appeal. It is fun to blame people. Trump was literally just elected president again on a platform of doing exactly that.”Oliver jokingly blamed the election on Katy Perry, citing her performance at Harris’s final rally on the eve of election day, where she covered Whitney Houston’s 1986 classic The Greatest Love of All.“Why would you try to cover Whitney Houston?!” he exclaimed, referring to the rendition as a “drunk bachelorette karaoke night performance”.Others have attributed Trump’s victory to inflation and frustration with the cost of living, even as macro indicators point to a strong economy. “It is not news that Trump’s overt white supremacy and misogyny appeal to many of his voters,” said Oliver. “It’s also not news that many like to hide that by claiming all they’re really worried about is the economy. But clearly for others, there is a willful denial going on about him. Because Trump lies so constantly, people have a sense that you can pick and choose what things he actually believes and create a version of him that suits you. And that can be the case even when his intentions are very clear.”The host then looked ahead to Trump’s second term, starting with a chart of potential Trump administration appointees that “looks like a choose your fighter screen where the only thing they’re fighting is the arc of the moral universe. It looks like an advent calendar where every circle opens up to a tiny piece of literal shit. It looks like a game board for Guess Who? Oops, all assholes.“If you are watching this right now and thinking, ‘You know what, I’m not actually ready for this either,’ I totally get it,” he said. “It is understandable not to want yet another guy in a suit doom-squawking at you. So if you are too angry, depressed or worried to watch the rest of this show, no problem. I have been in each of those places this week, and they are all a correct reaction because, look, we did a show like this after the election in 2016 when no one expected Trump to win.“This time, though, his winning felt like a real possibility all year long, lots of people mobilized to stop it, but it happened anyway, which feels somehow worse,” he continued.Trump will be sworn back into office on 20 January, and “that is very depressing”, said Oliver. “So what do the rest of us do next? Well, for the next few days, I’d say whatever you want. I am not gonna judge you for how you get through the next week.“There is no right reaction right now,” he added. “Lots of us are grieving and grief has stages. We take different amounts of time for different people. The stage I’m currently locked in is anger. I am mad for trans people who’ve been threatened. I’m disgusted at the prospect of mass deportation. I’m furious at Biden for not dropping out earlier, and that the egos and inaction of two men older than credit cards themselves have led us to this point. I’m mad that women have to hear ‘your body, my choice’ from rightwing dipshits.“I’m mad that Elon Musk is apparently sitting in on meetings with the president of Ukraine,” he continued. “I’m mad about the myriad of damage Trump will do that cannot easily be undone, like setting back efforts to fight climate change and appointing more supreme court justices. And I’m mad at the prospect of four more years of people saying, ‘So is your job like so much easier with Trump as president?’ No, it is not! No, it fucking isn’t! Fuck you so much!“So whether you’re angry right now, or despairing, or Googling ‘new country no fascists how move’, do what you’ve gotta do. But try not to completely obliterate yourself in despair,” he concluded. “Despair doesn’t help anything. If anything, it makes things worse.” Oliver did not encourage false hope, but instead counting the small victories to avoid burning out – such as Delaware’s election of the first openly trans member to the US House, or the rollback of abortion bans in several states and indicators that “Democratic policies are still popular even in a year that their candidate wasn’t”.“You might well be exhausted, confused, scared and running on fucking fumes right now,” he added. “Which is fucking understandable, but you might be surprised just how far you can still get even on fumes.” More

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      ‘People feel terrible. They want to laugh’: can comedy make light of Trump 2.0?

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      “When Trump first won, there was almost a novelty to having a character such as him in a position of such vast responsibility – that was a new thing for comedy to address,” said Andy Zaltzman, chair of Radio 4’s The News Quiz and the satirist behind The Bugle podcast and multiple political comedies.The first Trump presidency spawned debate about whether it’s possible to satirise a man whose extreme appearance and rhetoric mean he presents as a walking caricature. The New York Times even ran a piece titled “How President Trump ruined political comedy”.Now comedians in the UK and US are trying to work out how to deal with a second, possibly darker, Trump presidency.“Trump is so ridiculous that he makes comic extrapolation harder,” said Chicago-born, London-based standup Sara Barron, who found much of the comedy targeting Trump “did not provide catharsis”.Zaltzman has just embarked on a tour and, post-election, is writing new jokes exploring the global implications. Trump’s absurdity means there are obvious punchlines, “but it can be harder to get to the heart of the issue”, Zaltzman said.“Comedy is so ubiquitous – anything that happens, there’ll be a thousand memes and TikToks. The challenge is finding an original angle. That’s always been difficult with Trump.”View image in fullscreenPreviously, Zaltzman’s solution was presenting Trump’s brain (a cauliflower) on stage, using chopped-up Trump speeches to make it “speak” about Australian cricketers: “I figured no one else would be taking that angle.”In the run-up to election day, Barron found a personal angle. Coincidentally, her career thrived under Trump’s last tenure, so she made a sketch satirising the instinct of many to think: “This terrible thing is happening, but here’s why it’s OK for me!”Fellow US-born, UK-based standup Janine Harouni isn’t happy that Trump is back but said: “It’s a gift for comedy because people are feeling terrible and they want to laugh.” During Trump’s first term, Harouni produced Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated), in which she explored the political distance between her left-leaning self and her Trump-supporting father.“I wrote that show because I love my dad and cannot reconcile his political beliefs with how I feel about him personally. My father is also an Arab, son of immigrants, so I was really struggling with that,” Harouni said.She approached this via comedy because it felt so thorny. “Comedy is a release of worry and fear. If you can find a way to laugh at something that upset you, it doesn’t have control any more,” Harouni said. “I wanted it to feel healing and hopeful.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenBarron witnessed that power while performing on election results day – a reminder that comedians can “give people some kind of respite”, she said. “It was an electric gig. Everyone was so happy to be with like-minded people.”Catharsis is a driving force of political comedy, said Zaltzman: “It gives people a chance to laugh at serious news, which is valuable.” It can also challenge authority. “It absolutely has to hold power to account,” said Lewis MacLeod, the voice of Trump on Dead Ringers. “It becomes its own protest, but it’s done with laughs.”MacLeod perfected his Trump impression for the latest series by studying recent interviews. “Listening to him on Joe Rogan was a gift for any mimic. It was uninterrupted; he wasn’t arguing,” he said. “He’s a little bit older, more reflective. There’s this messianic tone.”MacLeod has also started caricaturing Elon Musk, who is likely to play a role in Trump’s administration. “There’s something of a mad, maniacal robot about him,” MacLeod said. There’s the danger of creating satirical impressions that are too likable: “That’s the rub of satire and mimicry.”With Trump’s increased support this time, Zaltzman questions the power of comedy to change minds but said: “The best comedy has elements of creativity and optimism, offering alternative ideas, hopefully that will emerge.”Harouni said, from her experience with her Trump-voting family, there’s reason to feel hopeful: “Not everyone who voted for Trump holds his worst beliefs.” She hopes the political comedy of the next four years considers that. “I like comedy that unites people from different systems of belief,” she said. “I hope people strive for that rather than continue to feed into the divisive narrative that’s driving Americans further apart.” More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s win: ‘The deep shock and sense of loss is enormous’

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      Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, sending him back to the White House.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert didn’t mince words on the results of the 2024 election: “Well, fuck. It happened, again,” he said. “After a bizarre and vicious campaign fueled by a desperate need not to go to jail, Donald Trump has won the 2024 election.“The deep shock and sense of loss is enormous,” he continued. “But let’s look at the bright side. This way at least there’ll be a peaceful transfer of power. Mike Pence, olly olly oxen free. All day yesterday, I was walking around proudly wearing my ‘I Voted’ sticker. Today I wore my, ‘I am questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of humanity’ sticker.“Now as a late-night host, people often say to me, ‘Come on, part of you has gotta want Trump to win because he gives you so much material to work with,’” he added. “No. No one tells the guy who cleans the bathroom, ‘Wow, you must love it when someone has explosive diarrhea, there’s so much material for you to work with!’“I wish, you wish, so many of us wish this hadn’t happened,” he continued, “but that is not for any of us to decide. This is a democracy. That’s Democracy with a capital ‘duh’. And in this democracy, the majority has spoken, and they said they don’t actually care that much about democracy.”The Late Show host congratulated Harris and Tim Walz on running an “extraordinary” 107-day campaign, and looked to the bleak future. “The first time Donald Trump was elected, he started as a joke and ended as a tragedy. This time he starts as a tragedy. Who knows what he’ll end as – a limerick?“Who knows what the next four years are going to be like,” he added. “What we do know is that we are going to be governed by a monstrous child surrounded by cowards and grifters, and my brain keeps pumping out an unlimited supply of ramifications. It’s really hard to see a bright side here.”But “we can take comfort in knowing that we’ve been here before. We know what’s coming,” he concluded. And there would be jokes, “because that’s what we do. And I’ll let you in on a little secret. No one gets into this business because everything in their life worked out great, so were built for rough roads. You guys ready?”Jimmy Kimmel“Let me tell you, that was the worst Taco Tuesday of my whole life,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening. “We had the choice between a prosecutor and a criminal and we chose the criminal to be president of the United States. More than half of this country voted for the criminal who’s planning to pardon himself for his crimes. I guess this election wasn’t rigged.”Fighting back tears, Kimmel listed everyone that Trump’s election will hurt: “It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go, for healthcare, for our climate, for scientists, for journalists, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for Nato and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him and guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too. You just don’t realize it yet.”It was a good night, however, for Putin, polio and “lovable billionaires like Elon Musk and the bros up in Silicon Valley and all the wriggling brain worms who sold what was left of their souls to bow down to Donald Trump”.“But I’m gonna say something that Trump would never say unless it favored him,” he added. “The people voted and this is the choice we made. In January, Donald Trump becomes president and that’s that, he won. It doesn’t mean we give up, but it also doesn’t mean we storm the Capitol because we don’t like the result.”Despite a lot of people not wanting to hear any silver lining, Kimmel endeavored to end on a positive note. “The best I can come up with is, we’ve been through this once before and yes, this time it is probably going to be worse, maybe a lot worse, but I also think that maybe we will look back and realize that in the long run, this is what we needed to wake us up,” he concluded. “Maybe the people who care so much about him need to find out how little he cares about them.”Seth MeyersAnd on Late Night, Seth Meyers also mourned Trump’s victory, noting that he will be the oldest person to ever take office and the first convicted felon. “When I was in grade school, they always told us anyone could grow up to be president, but they didn’t say ‘literally fucking anyone’,” he joked.“I wish I had some trenchant words of wisdom to impart,” he later added. “I’m sad to say I don’t. We’re about to step over the precipice into truly uncharted territory. You need only look back to Trump’s first term to get a sense of how dangerous his second term will be. And no one can say they didn’t know what they were getting, because Trump made it crystal clear. All I know is that the fight for justice doesn’t end with one election.“In times like this, when everything feels overwhelming and impossible, like all hope is lost, we have no choice but to look back on the broad scope of history,” he continued. “Justice is not automatic, comeuppance is not guaranteed, politics unfortunately is not a Marvel movie, even though Joe Biden does look eerily like old Captain America. That doesn’t mean a struggle toward a more just and compassionate world is futile, it just means it’s hard, and heartbreaking and soul-crushing and agonizing. And it never ends. Democracy does not happen only on election day.”Meyers ended with an exhortation to his viewers to keep fighting back: “If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who said no to Trump’s dark, dangerous vision for America last night, now is the time to stand in solidarity with our friends, with our neighbors, with the vulnerable communities, and begin the hard work of making real the world we want to live in. That’s what we will be doing on day one.” More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on US election: ‘It feels like the country is waiting to get results of a biopsy’

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      On the eve of election day, late-night hosts talked polls, the exhaustion of an endless campaign cycle and their closing arguments for Kamala Harris.Jimmy Kimmel“We are now one day away from having to wait another week to find out who won the election,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening. “It feels like the whole country is waiting to get the results of a biopsy.”Donald Trump declared his candidacy nearly two years ago, on 15 November 2022. “And now, 720 days, 88 criminal charges, 34 felony convictions, four indictments, two Democratic opponents and one garbage truck later, here we are. Election day,” said Kimmel.According to most national polls, the race is a dead heat, but Kimmel had harsh words for the pollsters. “These polls? They’re mood rings. That’s all they are,” he said. “They bring you up, they bring you down. Poll is short for bipolar.“There’s no magic involved, it’s heads or tails,” he added. “At the end of this, the pollsters who were wrong will quietly disappear. The other ones will be like ‘I told you, 1%.’ What did you tell us? You called 800 losers who didn’t have enough sense to not answer an unknown call.“I still don’t understand how this race is close,” he continued, referencing recordings obtained by the Daily Beast of Jeffrey Epstein talking about Trump as his “friend”.“Epstein said Trump told him he likes to have sex with the wives of his best friends, to the point where Epstein described Trump as having no ‘moral compass’. Do you know what kind of lowlife you have to be for Jeffrey Epstein to say you have no moral compass?” he fumed. “It’s like if R Kelly got mad at you for leaving the toilet seat up.”Kimmel concluded with his final message regarding the election: “Take a moment to imagine a world in which you wake up in the morning, you check the news, and no one says the words ‘Donald’ or ‘Trump’. Just a bunch of normal, boring stuff. Wouldn’t that be nice? No lawn signs. No red hats. No arguing with your grandfather.“Let’s remove this cancerous polyp from our collective national colon,” he added, “and move on already.”Seth Meyers“None of us can control what happens tomorrow, we can only control how drunk we are when it happens,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night, staring down a batch of polls declaring the election a “toss-up”.“How can so many polls be tied?” he wondered. “Are they doing the first half of the poll at an artisanal coffee shop in Williamsburg and the second half of the poll in a beer line at a Kid Rock concert?“How is it possible that exactly half the country think Trump is an amoral psychopath who would wreck American democracy, and the other half thinks he’s an amoral psychopath who would wreck American democracy … but it’s worth it because he’s an incredible dancer!”Meyers devoted a good chunk of his monologue to reminding voters what they were choosing between. Republicans’ closing message, he argued, was: “Are you going to vote for a woman whose laugh they don’t like, or are you going to vote for a guy who fomented a violent coup attempt after a months-long campaign against the 2020 election, undercut the nation’s response to a deadly pandemic that spiraled out of control because he tried to cover it up, lied about its severity, promoted sham treatments for it, said we could cure it by injecting disinfectant and shining powerful lights inside the body, became the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net job loss?”He listed more disqualifying credentials up to and including January 6 – full transcript here – and concluded with a note of exhaustion. “I’ve been talking about this man for nearly a decade now, as evidenced by the fact that everything I just listed is in my brain still somehow,” he said. “The symptoms that gave rise to him will not immediately go away if he loses tomorrow, but we do have an opportunity to say as a nation that we want him to go away. And I really hope that happens, mainly so I never have to think about this ever again.”Stephen Colbert“After a two-year campaign, we have finally made it through all 20 years,” said Stephen Colbert on Late Night. “We’re all in some true sense about to witness history. Good or bad. I’m guessing this is how the people of Pompeii felt when Vesuvius was trying to get re-elected.”Like Meyers and Kimmel, Colbert was frustrated by the dead-heat polls. “I could get a clearer prediction from a magic 8 ball!” he joked.One ray of light, however, was J Ann Selzer’s highly regarded Des Moines Register poll in Iowa, which found Harris leading Trump by three points, with senior women breaking for the vice-president 63% to 28%. “Oh, senior women are AAR-pissed,” Colbert quipped. “Save me, Gam-Gam!”The Harris campaign cautioned about getting too excited, but “too late!” Colbert chirped. “I have to be excited, because I’ve only got two other choices. Absolute terror or Absolut vodka. I need this. There’s no in between.”Meanwhile, in the final days of the campaign, Trump was “presenting a very good case that his brain done broke”, Colbert quipped. In North Carolina, Trump tried to “out-Tim Walz Tim Walz” with a football pep talk that went awry. “All we have to do is carry that ball over that … thing,” he said.“Oh yes, exactly,” Colbert joked. “Just carry the ball over that … thing.” More

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      John Oliver on Trump’s businesses: ‘Always operating at maximum greed’

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      On the final episode of Last Week Tonight before the 2024 election, John Oliver provided one final reason not to vote for Donald Trump: his many dubious businesses, which could guide his actions if elected president again. “We’ve talked all year about the many good reasons not to vote for him: his mass deportation plans, his shaping of the courts, Project 2025, everything he said or did before his presidency, everything he said or did during his presidency, everything he said or did after his presidency and the fact that it should be unconstitutional to have a vice-president named JD,” said Oliver.But when it comes to making money as a former president, “Trump is in a category all his own”, he added.Since leaving office, Trump’s hotels have announced deals in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Vietnam. He’s hawked official Trump coins, a Trump-branded Bible, the “never surrender” high-top sneakers and “the ugliest watch I have ever seen in my life”, said Oliver. “It makes your wrist look like it’s having a midlife crisis. It looks like it was made by melting down King Charles.“The fact Trump is willing to slap his name on random products is nothing new. It’s always been part of his MO,” he continued. “But the scope of his business ventures has actually escalated sharply,” which makes sense – since leaving office, Trump has racked up millions in legal expenses and has multiple judgments worth hundreds of millions against him. “Does nearly half a billion in penalties hanging over his head make the greediest man to ever live even greedier?” Oliver wondered. “Maybe, maybe not. After all, Trump is always operating at maximum greed, the same way the ocean is always operating at maximum wet.“But it does mean that he is a little more desperate,” Oliver continued, because if Trump’s appeals fail and he doesn’t come up with the money, courts could order his assets – including his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort – seized and sold. The incentive is to make more money than even, and if he wins the election, “he’s got some troubling new ways to do that”, said Oliver.Oliver recapped the guardrails during Trump’s first term which, unfortunately, weren’t so much legal guardrails as “norms that could be ignored”. Trump wasn’t required to release his tax returns or put his assets in a blind trust, so he didn’t. “If Trump is not required to do something, he’s not doing it,” Oliver noted. “It’s why he doesn’t say he lost the last election, or hug his children, or bother to learn the fucking dance moves to YMCA – for the love of God, move your arms above your shoulders, you human pot roast.”Trump instead put his assets into a revocable trust that he could access any time, run by his sons Eric and Don Jr as well as the company CFO, Allen Weisselberg, who has gone to jail twice for lying under oath and dodging taxes.Trump also blew past whatever laws did exist over presidential finances. The emoluments clause of the US constitution forbids the president from accepting money or gifts of any kind from foreign governments unless he obtains consent of Congress to do so, but his businesses made $7.8m from 20 foreign governments during his time in office. The top spenders were China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.“In any other universe, ‘president accepts money from foreign governments’ would be immediately disqualifying,” said Oliver. “Unfortunately, we live in this universe, where a candidate for president has been criminally indicted four times and convicted of 34 felony counts thus far, his running mate sees women as walking incubators and Reba McEntire still hasn’t done Hot Ones. This is not the ideal timeline!”Trump’s financial violations during his presidency were the subject of several lawsuits, but he left office before they were settled, leading the supreme court to dismiss the matter as moot in January 2021. “Basically, he ran out the clock,” said Oliver. “So there is no evidence to suggest that Trump won’t carry on his personal enrichment during a second term.”And he has more avenues to do so, if elected again. Since leaving office, Trump launched Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is Truth Social, or as Oliver called it, “the Maga version of Twitter, a phrase that is now totally redundant”. The company is now Trump’s highest-valued financial holding by far, though that does not reflect the lackluster performance of Truth Social, which is the 1,174th most popular website in the US. But because presidents are not bound by federal conflict of interest law, Trump could use the office of the president to artificially boost the stock to his personal enrichment. American companies seeking to curry favor could buy ads on the platform and foreign governments looking to do the same could buy shares of the company.Public companies are still subject to some regulation; his ventures into crypto, on the other hand, are not. In the past two years, Trump has launched his own branded NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which have made him at least $7.2m off what Oliver declared “worthless pieces of shit”.The Trump family has also launched a vague crypto-focused company called World Liberty Financial with Trump as its “chief crypto advocate”. The company “intends to build a platform that will allow users to trade, borrow and lend cryptocurrencies”, according to its “Gold Paper”.If Trump wins, it’s expected that he will directly influence regulations – or lack thereof – of crypto companies, which one expert described as “conflict of interest 101”. “This is obviously extremely dangerous, but especially in a place that’s so new,” said Oliver. With crypto, Oliver summarized, Trump would not only be exploiting loopholes, but creating the loopholes in real time.“It was clear before Trump was elected that he’d use the presidency to enrich himself,” Oliver noted. “But in a second term, the landscape is very different. We’re no longer talking about a tacky Florida country club that CEOs or foreign officials can visit for special access to the president. It’s two new companies in branches of technology that we’re still trying to figure out how to regulate, that could expose him to new levels of risk and provide avenues for people to funnel money to him and influence him.“None of this is the biggest reason not to vote for him,” he concluded. “But it’s another good one to put alongside the many, many others.” More

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      Seth Meyers on ex-president’s alleged admiration of Nazi generals: ‘Trump is a fascist’

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      Late-night hosts talk the former White House chief of staff John Kelly calling Donald Trump a fascist and Tucker Carlson’s bizarre rant about spanking on the campaign trail.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers devoted his Thursday Closer Look segment to the bombshell political story of the week: a New York Times interview with John Kelly, in which the former White House chief of staff said Donald Trump expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals. “I’m not sure we as a society have fully absorbed the magnitude of this story, given the way the media has been covering it,” the Late Night host said before a clip of CNN following up the story with a report on Eminem campaigning for Kamala Harris.“You can’t follow up a story as insane as ‘presidential candidate praises Hitler’ with fun wordplay about Eminem,” said Meyers. “If the first story is the next president could be a Hitler-lover, then just don’t have a second story. That’s enough to fill an hour.”“I get it can be tough to figure out how to cover something like this, because like all Trump revelations it’s both shocking and not at all surprising,” he added. “So we’re left in this weird middle ground where you’re reporting something that everyone basically knows already, but it’s also still insane. It’s like going through a haunted house with a group of friends that used to work there.”Naturally, Republicans are scrambling to normalize the situation. Meyers played a clip of the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu, who said on CNN: “Look, we’ve heard a lot of extreme things about Donald Trump from Donald Trump. It’s kinda par for the course. It’s really, unfortunately, with a guy like that, it’s really baked into the vote.”“His love of Adolf Hitler is baked in?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like saying, ‘Look, that dead rat is baked into this loaf of sourdough. What are you going to do, go all the way back to the bakery?’ If it’s baked in, then don’t eat the thing it’s baked into!“This is not a complicated story,” he concluded. “Trump is a fascist who likes other fascists and wants to emulate fascism. If you’re shrugging that off as baked in, then you’re just saying that you’re OK with fascism. If you’re still supporting Trump, just admit that you think fascism is cool.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert noted that Trump will hold a rally at Madison Square Garden this weekend. “Just what New Yorkers need – more garbage around Penn Station,” he joked.The rally is “confusing”, as “New York is not what you call a swing state,” he said. Trump trails Kamala Harris by 19 points in the state – “or as the New York Jets say, not bad!” Colbert quipped.Given the interview with Kelly this week, in 10 days, “we all get to find out whether we live in a fascist country”, said Colbert. “I’m not saying that’s a good feeling, but definitely the feeling. And if you’re feeling the same way, you’re not alone.”Colbert played a clip from CNN’s presidential town hall in which Anderson Cooper asked Harris whether she thought Trump was a fascist; she replied: “Yes, I do.”Meanwhile, Trump was joined on the campaign trail by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who made his case for the former president with a bizarre rant about spanking. “Dad comes home. He’s pissed. Dad is pissed. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now,’” he told the crowd.“I just can’t figure out why they’re having trouble appealing to female voters,” Colbert deadpanned. “Not to fact-check you there, Tuck, but we know from Stormy Daniels that Daddy is the one who likes to get spanked.”Overall, “that was an upsetting little monologue,” Colbert concluded. “Angry Daddies punishing little girls? I’m guessing when Tucker wrote that, he was vigorously spanking something.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, the guest host Michael Kosta also mocked Carlson’s bizarre spanking speech. Carlson began his speech with a cackle, delighting in what he said was his first appearance at a political rally. “I don’t want to be a hater – he’s excited for his first political rally. Seems like a perfectly reasonable time to laugh like an old-timey villain who tied a woman to the railroad tracks,” Kosta joked.And then he played one of Carlson’s most offending lines: “You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking, right now.”“This might be why you’ve never been invited to speak at a political rally before,” said Kosta. “You see, America, these Trump people, they aren’t weird. They just know that Trump is a big, strong daddy that’s coming home to spank us all. Totally normal stuff! I can’t wait to hear Tucker’s thoughts on the economy – ‘Inflation is like a babysitter, and she’s been naughty.’” More

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      John Oliver on VP debate’s ‘civility’: ‘Etiquette is kind of beside the point’

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      On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver ripped into those praising the “civility” of last week’s vice-presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz. “Etiquette is kind of beside the point” when the stakes include immigrant rights and women’s bodily autonomy, he contended.“It’s like reading a ransom note and going, ‘This cursive is just so lovely. Look at the capital Y in ‘You have 24 hours before he dies.’ There are still some people who were raised right,’” he quipped.Oliver tore into Vance’s refusal to say, when asked directly, that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. In what Walz called “a damning non-answer”, Vance deflected with: “I’m focused on the future.”“‘I’m focused on the future’ is one of the most generic store-brand fuckboy deflections there is,” Oliver fumed. “It’s no wonder Tim Walz broke the fourth wall there like he was in Abbott Elementary. Because ‘I’m focused on the future’ is what you say when you want to change the subject. If not, you just answer the question.”Oliver also touched on special counsel Jack Smith’s 165-page report detailing the ways Trump and his cohort attempted to overturn the 2020 election, “reminding us yet again of the ridiculous steps he took to avoid leaving office”. According to the document, Trump allegedly told people in the White House he knew he had lost but that he would “fight like hell” anyway.“But it super matters if you lost,” Oliver countered. “It’s kind of the main thing that matters. That is the most unsettling thing you could possibly overhear if you work at the White House.”The report also notes that Trump muted his lawyer Sidney Powell during a phone call “when she was outlining her bogus fraud claims” and called her ideas crazy.“If I ever found out that I lied so badly that Donald Trump muted the call to say this is some crazy shit, you would never see me again,” Oliver laughed. “I would walk directly into the ocean.”Jokes aside, Oliver reminded: “None of this is theoretical. If he loses next month, there is every reason to believe Trump will dispute the results again and Vance has made it clear he’s got no problem with that. And that alone should be disqualifying.“For all the talk this week about his civility at the debate, let’s not forget: deep down [Vance] is the same colossal dipshit who spews rightwing hate with distressing ease and continues to defend the ‘big lie’ that the last election was stolen,” he continued. “It is all tremendously bleak, which is why – to borrow a phrase I heard recently – I’m focused on the future, specifically one in which in four weeks’ time, Trump hopefully loses this fucking election.”In his main segment, Oliver looked into how a routine traffic stop for “non-safety violations” can become a terror, with law enforcement disproportionately targeting people of color. Traffic stops are “the most common law enforcement interaction in America”, with police pulling over an average of 50,000 people in a day in the US.Those interactions can turn deadly: since 2017, armed police have killed at least 813 people in routine traffic stops, the vast majority of them Black. “We’ve all seen the videos of high-profile killings,” said Oliver, referring to the police shootings of Philando Castile, Daunte Wright and others, recorded by bystanders or police body-cams. “The horror of those videos should be seared into our collective consciouses by now.”Because of this pattern, for Black motorists, “driving comes with a constant undercurrent of fear”, said Oliver.He noted that there are legitimate safety reasons to pull over some drivers – someone driving too fast or recklessly, for instance, but no driver should worry about a traffic stop and “also have to worry about being harassed or potentially killed”.Such risks are not the product of a few bad apples in law enforcement, said Oliver; it’s “the inevitable result of deliberate decisions that have turned traffic stops into a systemic issue”.Oliver ticked through documentation of how police departments incentivize traffic stops as a means of funding, and encourage officers to apply deeply subjective criteria to pulling people over. Such “pretextual stops” basically equate to “shaking people down to see what crimes fall out”, he said.As an aside, he played an old PSA featuring characters from the musical Cats encouraging people to drive safely, lest their children become nothing but “memories”. “Let me just say this,” said Oliver. “That musical is an abomination. If there is ever a day that Andrew Lloyd Webber has no haters, that means that I am dead and so, by the way, is Patti LuPone.”On a more serious note, Oliver encouraged a full-stop end to pretextual stops and eliminating non-safety-related traffic stops. Such measures have already been adopted at the local level in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Philadelphia – where, after eight months, traffic stops were cut in half, meaning 12,000 fewer Black drivers were pulled over. He also advocated for decriminalizing minor traffic offenses (such as broken tail lights) and making data on traffic stops public, including the race of those pulled over – “frankly fucking incredible that it’s not already happening”, he noted.While some of these measures may be politically difficult, when it comes to non-safety-related traffic stops, “doing fewer of them for bullshit reasons should be a pretty easy sell”. More

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      in Elections

      Stephen Colbert on report on Trump’s attempts to steal election: ‘Smells like consequences’

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      Late-night hosts talk Jack Smith’s new report on how Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and Republican hypocrisy over Joe Biden’s age.Stephen ColbertBack in July, the supreme court released a 6-3 decision declaring that Trump had immunity from prosecution on acts committed as president, “all but guaranteeing that the case would be delayed past the election, and no one would be talking about or learning any more about it”, said Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Show.“Well, surprise!” he added, holding a 165-page report by special counsel Jack Smith on Trump’s efforts to steal the election. “Mhmmm, that’s beefy. Smells like consequences.”The report details efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, and “how they are not covered by that ridiculous immunity ruling”, said Colbert.“We knew stuff in this report already, but it’s still gratifying to read the novelization of the horror movie we all lived through,” he added. According to the report, Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and in his bid to hold on to power, “resorted to crimes”.“Pretty damning language, but kinda weird word choice to say Trump ‘resorted’ to crimes,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying ‘With nowhere else to turn, the bear resorted to pooping in the woods.’”“Just to note, ‘resorted to crimes’ should not be confused with ‘crime resort’ – another name for Mar-a-Lago.”Seth MeyersAccording to Republicans, January 6 is ancient history, “which is why a new filing from special counsel Jack Smith in the election subversion case is so damning”, said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “It reminds everyone of what Trump and his allies tried to do, and how brazen they were about it.”According to Smith’s report, Trump was overheard saying to his daughter Ivanka: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”“This is the most damning thing: in private, Trump knew he lost, despite what he was telling his supporters in public,” said Meyers.The report also details how Rudy Giuliani accidentally butt-dialed an NBC reporter, who overheard him discussing his need for cash and trashing the Biden family. “As a favor to Rudy, stop giving this man your phone number,” Meyers laughed. “The only two numbers he should have in his phone are his doctor and a liquor store that delivers.”“Rudy is the first criminal in history who has managed to rat on himself,” he continued. “The FBI doesn’t need to bug him or monitor his calls. They just have to sit around and wait until he accidentally sits on his phone and calls them.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel marveled at how Trump is now trying to get out of election fraud charges by claiming that the investigators rigged the election. “The old ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ defense,” said Kimmel.As Trump said in a recent far-right news interview: “The election was rigged. I didn’t rig it. They did.”“He’s actually right about some of that – he didn’t rig the election,” said Kimmel. “He tried to rig the election, and failed to rig the election. He’s rig-noramus, is what he is.”Meanwhile, Trump was “ranting and raving” in Michigan this week on the campaign trail. “If you watch any of his speeches from the last election, from 2020, you’ll see he’s slower,” said Kimmel. “He slurs his words, he repeats the same stories over and over and over again. He’s repeatedly promised to release his medical records and has not.”Which is notable, because Republicans “were very worked up about Joe Biden and how old he was, his energy levels and ability to lead, but even though Trump is only three years younger than Biden, they don’t seem too worried about that anymore”, said Kimmel before a montage of all the GOP Biden criticisms easily applied to Trump’s ravings on the campaign trail. More

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      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on JD Vance’s debate performance: ‘Brazen and shameless’

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      Late-night hosts talk JD Vance’s many lies during the vice-presidential debate and a new special counsel report detailing how Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election.Seth MeyersDonald Trump is “a bad liar”, said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, but he chose as his running mate “someone who is much more polished at it”. JD Vance, Ohio senator, is “brazen and shameless, but he’s admittedly very smooth. He’s like a slick used car dealer, and can be very convincing until you remember the car he’s trying to sell you is an AMC Gremlin with raccoons in the engine.”For instance, during the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday evening, Vance claimed that he was not in favor of a national abortion ban, but did support a “minimum national standard”.“That’s a ban,” Meyers corrected. “A ‘minimum national standard’ is just a bullshit way of describing a national abortion ban. It’s like when I go to the coffee shop on my block and they say they sell all-natural, gluten-free breakfast biscuits. That’s a cookie, dude. Except now you’ve guaranteed that my kids won’t stop asking me why they can’t have it.”Vance has said multiple times that he favors a national abortion ban. On a rightwing podcast in 2022, he said: “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”“That’s what happens when you say yes to every rightwing podcast in the universe,” said Meyers. “JD Vance is on record contradicting every thing he says now. Politicians used to be worried about being caught on a hot mic. But now they go into every McMansion basement they can find like they’re on a hot mic scavenger hunt.”Vance also refused to say whether Trump lost the 2020 election. When asked point blank by his opponent, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, Vance deflected with: “I’m focused on the future.”“If you ask someone a straightforward question and they say ‘I’m focused on the future’ that’s how you know they’re caught in a lie,” said Meyers. “Vance may have delivered a slick performance last night, but it was just that – a performance.”Stephen Colbert“We are all still struggling to digest last night’s vice-presidential debate – which is surprising, because usually I have no trouble eating two slices of white bread,” joked Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.The Late Show host described the debate as a “frosty cup of ZzzQuil”, as the two politicians performed civility and appeared to frequently agree with each other.The Atlantic described the debate as “a vision of what American politics could be without the distorting gravitational field generated by Donald Trump”.“I would love that,” said Colbert, “but here’s the thing: Donald Trump hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still the main character. This is like a scene from It without Pennywise on camera, and everyone is suddenly like, ‘Welp, guess there’s no more scary clowns in Derry. Ooh, free sewer balloon!’”Colbert took particular aim at Vance’s answer to a question on Obamacare, which Trump tried to destroy numerous times: “I think you could make a really good argument that [Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.”“That kind of junior high debate team sophistry is exactly the worst kind of behavior that intelligent people use to justify evil,” added Colbert. “You know, when you think about it, it could be argued that Godzilla really spearheaded Tokyo’s urban renewal.”Colbert was also incensed at Vance’s characterization of January 6: “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January the 20th.”“Yeah, 14 days after his plot to overthrow the election ended in a violent coup that failed,” said Colbert. “That’s like saying to your ex: ‘Barbara, I think it’s rich that you’re calling me psychotically obsessed with our relationship, when I left your and Brad’s wedding peacefully. You’re the one who won’t stop talking about me setting fire to the DJ.’”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel looked ahead to election day: “We are 34 days away from Trump saying the election was rigged, just as he did four years ago.” Trump’s efforts to overturn the election four years ago are detailed in a new report from special counsel Jack Smith.The judge overseeing the January 6 case in Washington unsealed a 165-page court filing containing a “mountain” of testimony and evidence against Trump. “All the stuff we know happened, we now have in writing,” said Kimmel.The filing lays out “the increasingly desperate ways Trump tried to steal the election”, Kimmel explained. “You know, sometimes I would wonder, does Trump really believe that this election was stolen from him? And the answer is no, he doesn’t. The plan all along was to declare himself the winner even he if wasn’t, which he did. And then when he realized he was going to lose, he made up these claims of fraud.“He called governors and election officials,” he continued. “He hammered Mike Pence. He deliberately spread lies, even though he privately admitted they were crazy lies. He was directly involved in the fake elector scheme. And he stole all the Oreos from the White House snack cabinet.”The report also detailed just how many times Trump pressured Mike Pence to try to decertify the election, though he had no authority to do so. “There were meetings, phone calls, text messages – Pence was basically Trump’s Baby Reindeer,” Kimmel joked. More