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    Jimmy Kimmel feuds with Elon Musk: ‘At least my children like me’

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    Late-night hosts talk Elon Musk calling Jimmy Kimmel a “propaganda puppet”, how Democrats move forward and bankruptcy court for TGI Fridays.Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel continued to process the election results on Thursday evening. “The crazy thing is, there are still two months before our long national nightmare even begins,” he said of Donald Trump’s victory. “It’s like we’re standing in the middle of the road waiting for a bus to hit us, but it’s still 40 miles away.”Kimmel then took aim at Trump’s richest ally, Musk, who posted on X, formerly Twitter until he bought it, that Kimmel was “an insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet”.“At least my children like me,” Kimmel retorted. “The guy who paid people $1m a day to vote for Donald Trump is calling me a propaganda puppet? Listen Kermit, you bought Twitter. You bought a social media platform that is literally a propaganda machine.“Let me tell you something,” he continued. “If I spent four weeks trying to come up with a description of Elon Musk, I don’t think I could do better than ‘insufferable nonsense propaganda puppet’.”Kimmel reminded viewers of what Trump used to say about Musk before the Tesla CEO gave him $100m. In June 2022, he posted on Truth Social about meeting with Musk, bragging: “I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg’ and he would have done it … ”“And you know what he means by beg, right?” Kimmel laughed. “I’m sure you guys will be great together now that you’re friends. I’m sure his little hand will fit nicely in your sockhole.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers lamented how the justice department is reportedly wrapping up its legal cases against Trump in wake of his second term as president. “We have a stupid system that’s basically makes getting elected president a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said. “They’re going to have to add one to Monopoly that says ‘Run for president, win, collect $200’ and then a second card that says ‘Unless your name is Rudy Giuliani, then you’re still broke and disbarred and weird.’“So Trump’s about to skate and Republicans are demanding peace, meanwhile Democrats have descended into recriminations and finger-pointing,” he said before several clips of Democratic pundits blaming the “far left” for Kamala Harris’s defeat.“You think Kamala Harris was too far left? She campaigned with Liz Cheney!” Meyers countered. “The only way she could’ve run a more mainstream, centrist campaign was if she formed a Huey Lewis cover band with Mitt Romney and did a cameo on Law & Order. I mean, she praised Dick Cheney, for crying out loud!“It’s not an issue of left versus far left,” he later added. “You just have to make people’s lives better in a way that’s direct and easy to understand and then aggressively take credit for it.“There are lessons Democrats can take away from this election, and if they implement those lessons quickly, a lot can change,” he concluded.Stephen ColbertAnd on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert mourned a different type of loss: the potential end of TGI Fridays, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week. “But if there are no more TGI Fridays, what are we going to thank God for now?” he joked. “I don’t understand – Wednesday? We’re too busy humping! God doesn’t want to see that.”According to Fortune, the restaurant chain is worried it won’t have enough cash if customers redeem the $50m in outstanding gift cards that don’t expire. “So the greatest threat TGI Fridays is facing is that someday, it might occur to people to dine there,” Colbert laughed. “So that $50m in gift cards may soon be worthless, but don’t worry you can always use them at TGI Fridays sister restaurant: Aah, It’s Monday.”In more serious news, “we still don’t know the entire parade of clowns, degenerates and in-laws that Trump will have running this country,” said Colbert, but it’s likely one will be former presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. The Kennedy scion made headlines throughout his campaign for “doing a whole bunch of crazy stuff”, including but not limited to: dumping a dead bear in Central Park as a prank, living with an emu that would regularly attack his wife, owning two ravens who would “meditate” with him, bragging about his freezer full of roadkill meat, and beheading a whale and then strapping it to the roof of his minivan for a five-hour drive home.“Now, that sounds deranged,” said Colbert, “but he actually has a good reason for all of this: a worm got into his brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” (That’s yet another reported Kennedy story.)“So, naturally, this whale-decapitating, bear-dumping, walking, talking worm cemetery is who Donald Trump wants to put in charge of our nation’s health,” Colbert lamented. 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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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s garbage truck stunt: ‘I think you should stay there’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump dressing up as a garbageman as a late campaign stunt and Kamala Harris’s lead among suburban women.Seth Meyers“All politicians pander,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night, “but Donald Trump is the most shameless and prolific panderer in American history”. And “one of Trump’s favorite pandering tactics is playing dress-up”.On Wednesday, the former US president donned his “latest and perhaps most insane outfit yet” at a campaign stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Wearing a reflective orange vest, Trump climbed into a garbage truck emblazoned with his name and asked reporters: “What do you think of my garbage truck?”“You want to know what I really think of your garbage truck? I think it’s awesome and I think you should stay there,” Meyers replied. “I think you should drop out of the race and host a reality show where you try out different jobs while wearing exactly one piece of that job’s uniform.”Trump continued to wear the vest at a rally after the garbage truck stunt, designed to distract from the backlash to racist comments about Puerto Rico at his rally over the weekend. At his rally, he danced to his trademark campaign song, the Village People’s YMCA. “How is this real life?” Meyers wondered. “He doesn’t look like he’s running for president. He looks like he’s at a Halloween party at an assisted living facility.”In truth, “Trump could never make it as a sanitation worker,” Meyers added. “It’s a tough job with actual stakes and genuine responsibility, and no amount of cosplaying can make up for the fact that he’d be really bad at it. He wouldn’t last a day.”The stunt underscored the “central lie” of Trump’s political career: “that he’s a populist, an everyman, a champion of the working class. It’s a fraud.” Meyers reminded that Trump has cozied up to the world’s richest people, promised deregulation to please billionaires like Elon Musk, promised a tax cut for the wealthy and said he would not continue overtime pay. During his presidency, corporate profits soared while manufacturing jobs declined.“This is the one discernible throughline of Trump’s presidency in his three campaigns: billionaires will flourish, while regular people will suffer,” said Meyers.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s stumbling ascent into the garbage truck. “Looks like Trump is taking walking lessons from Rudy Giuliani,” he quipped.Trump tried to give a press conference from the truck, which devolved into rambling that ended with “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck.”“That’s an inspiring closing message,” Colbert deadpanned, before imitating the former president. “I hope you enjoyed this garbage truck, by which I mean, this campaign. It has been a true honor and a bone-chilling dumpster fire.”At his rally, Trump mused about how he was advised not to say he wants to “protect women” by allowing Roe v Wade to be overturned. “I said, well, I’m gonna go do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them,” he said.“Now, I know that seems weird and creepy there, but I promise you, it sounded much sweeter in his wedding vows,” Colbert quipped.The host also noted that over 60 million people have already voted, with a 10-point gender gap in early turnout. The polls show that Harris has a 19-point lead among suburban women. “That’s right, Harris is almost as popular among suburban women as cocktail napkins that say ‘Wine do you mean we’re out of wine?!’” he joked.The gender gap has led to a rise in online queries such as: “Can my husband find out who I voted for?”“No, he can’t,” said Colbert. “But if that’s really a concern, the two of you should just sit down, and while he’s watching TV maybe look up your old college boyfriend on Facebook.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also relished Trump’s brand-emblazoned garbage truck “because he is a ridiculous person”.Nevertheless, Trump’s cronies, such as Sean Hannity, tried to spin the photo op as a triumph. “The dumber Trump gets, the deeper Sean digs to spin stupid into smart,” said Kimmel.The Fox News host tried to claim the photo op was an “iconic, epic moment that we will remember for a long time”.“Washington crossed the Delaware, Trump hitched a ride on a garbage Trump,” Kimmel quipped. “The garbage drove the truck.”Kimmel also noted the absurdity of Trump’s subsequent rally with the reflective vest still on. “If there is a single image that we will look back on and think ‘this defines what America was going through in 2024’ I think it will be the Republican nominee for president dancing to the song YMCA in a garbageman costume,” he said.“That vest will come in handy when he’s on the side of the road picking up trash with the other inmates.” 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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      The high life: Kamala Harris cracks open a beer with Stephen Colbert

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      When they go low, she goes high. Miller High Life to be precise.Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, took her election campaign to late night television on Tuesday by cracking open a can of the lager with host Stephen Colbert. The moment set her apart from Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both, famously, teetotallers.The vice-president also used the interview in New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater to lambast Trump over a report that he sent Covid testing kits to Russia’s Vladimir Putin even as US citizens went without. “He thinks, well, that’s his friend,” she said. “What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”The appearance before a live audience capped a media blitz for Harris who, having previously been criticised for dodging interviews, spoke in recent days to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the podcast Call Her Daddy, the daytime show The View and radio host Howard Stern.The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has featured Harris, Biden and numerous other politicians over the years, blending serious political issues with light relief. During Tuesday’s interview in New York, he noted that people are calling this “the vibe election” and that voters typically want a candidate they can have a beer with.He duly invited Harris to share a drink and said she had requested Miller High Life in advance. The vice-president remarked: “OK, the last time I had beer was at a baseball game with Doug. Cheers.”Harris repeated the popular slogan “The champagne of beers”, while Colbert noted that it comes from Milwaukee, in the swing state of Wisconsin. He said: “So that covers Wisconsin. Let’s talk Michigan. Let’s appeal to the Michigan voters, OK? What are your favourite Bob Seger songs?”The host proceeded to reel off a list of Seger songs but Harris did not appear enthusiastic. Finally, she said: “I’ll go Aretha or Eminem. You got any?”The 40-minute interview, due to be broadcast on CBS on Tuesday night, also tackled serious topics. Colbert asked about the 7 October attack by Hamas and Israel’s response. Harris said: “We must have a ceasefire and hostage deal as immediately as possible. This war has got to end. It has to end.”Progress on a deal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages is “meaningless”, she acknowledged, until it is reached. Harris said she has met with the families of hostages and the families of Palestinians killed in Gaza. “We’ve got to get a deal done and we’re not going to give up.”The interview took place after it emerged that journalist Bob Woodward writes in his new book, War, that Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president Covid test machines in 2020. Trump has denied the claims.Harris commented: “He openly admires dictators and authoritarians. He has said he wants to be a dictator on day one if he were elected again as president. He gets played by these guys. He admires so-called strongmen and he gets played because they flatter him or offer him favour.”Referring to the Covid test kits, she went on: “I ask everyone here and everyone who is watching: do you remember what those days were like? You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?”Harris became visibly irate as she recalled that hundreds of people were dying every day, some comforted only by nurses because their families could not reach them.
      “And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin? Think about what this means on top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong-un. He thinks, well, that’s his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”Earlier Colbert asked Harris about a now celebrated image of her in the presidential debate against Trump in which she frowned and rested her chin on a hand. Asked what she was thinking at that moment, she replied: “It’s family TV, right? It starts with a W, there’s a letter between it, then the last letter’s F.” She burst into laughter.The comedian asked if Trump lost the 2020 election, something he has always denied. Harris said: “You know, when you lost millions of jobs, you lost manufacturing, you lost automotive plants, you lost the election. What does that make you? A loser. This is what somebody at my rallies said. I thought it was funny.”She laughed and Colbert remarked: “It’s accurate. It’s accurate.”Then Harris pointed out: “This is what happens when I drink beer!” More

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      Harris embarks on media blitz and tries to edge out Trump in key swing states

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      Kamala Harris has embarked on a week-long media blitz, hurtling from TV studios and late-night shows to podcast interviews as she seeks to gain an edge over Donald Trump in the US election’s key battleground states that remain nail-bitingly close.The vice-president’s decision to face a raft of largely friendly media outlets came as the campaigns entered the final 30 days. More than 1.4 million Americans have already cast their ballots in early voting across 30 states.The Democratic nominee’s whirlwind media tour has been carefully crafted for maximum reach and minimum risk. Harris has talked to the CBS News show 60 Minutes, along with the popular podcast Call Her Daddy.On Tuesday she hits the media capital, New York, for appearances on ABC News’s daytime behemoth The View and the Howard Stern Show, followed by a recording with late-night host Stephen Colbert.The first of a flurry of comments from Harris was put out by 60 Minutes on Sunday before a full broadcast on Monday. Harris will appear alone, after Trump declined to be interviewed by the election special which has been a staple of US election coverage for more than half a century.In a short clip released by 60 Minutes, Harris was asked whether the Biden-Harris administration had any sway over the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu, the hardline prime minister of Israel who appears not to listen to Washington. Asked whether the US had a “real close ally” in Netanyahu, she replied: “With all due respect, the better question is: do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”Since Harris’s meteoric propulsion as Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden stepped aside, her relative avoidance of press or TV interviews has become a point of contention on the campaign trail. Republican leaders and pundits on Fox News routinely accuse her of being media-shy.This week’s blitz is designed to counter that impression, while reaching large audiences focused on demographic groups which will be central to Harris’s chances of winning in November. Call Her Daddy is Spotify’s most-listened to podcast among women, while The View is the number one ranked daytime talk show with 2.5 million average viewers, again heavily weighted towards women.Meanwhile Colbert’s show on CBS is the highest rated late-night talk show attracting large numbers of younger viewers aged 18 to 49 – another critical demographic on Harris’s target list.Harris’s running mate, the Democratic governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, is also making his own media scramble which began on Sunday, with him entering less comfortable territory on Fox News Sunday. He was questioned about the pro-abortion law that he signed in his state, and also asked to clarify the occasions on which he has misrepresented his record.That included a comment that he had carried weapons in war when he had not, and his classifying the treatment that he and his wife received to have a child as IVF when it was in fact a different type of fertility treatment.At last week’s vice-presidential debate Walz recognised his missteps, calling himself a “knucklehead”.Walz told Fox News Sunday: “To be honest with you, I don’t think American people care whether I used IUI or IVF, what they understand is that Donald Trump would resist these things. I speak passionately … I will own up when I misspeak and when I make a mistake.”As the contest enters its final month, the Guardian’s latest tracker of opinion polls shows Harris up on Trump by three percentage points nationally. In the more telling test of the seven battleground states that will decide the outcome, though Harris is ahead in five of them, the margin remains essentially too close to call.Both candidates and their running mates are speeding up their frantic dash around the seven states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Harris and Walz will be in Arizona this weeks, where early voting begins on Wednesday.On Thursday, the Democratic ticket will gain extra ballast when former president and campaigning superstar Barack Obama kicks off a round of stump appearances in the all-important swing state, Pennsylvania. He will begin in Pittsburgh, and will then travel across the country on Harris’s behalf, campaign aides have said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump was scheduled to hold a rally in Juneau, Wisconsin, on Sunday afternoon, a day after he made a pointed return to the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he came close to being assassinated on 13 July. Trump and his younger son Eric used the occasion to spread the baseless claim that the Democrats had been behind the attempt on his life.“They tried to kill him, it’s because the Democratic party can’t do anything right,” Eric Trump said. Billionaire Elon Musk also appeared on stage.On Sunday, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the US House, was asked by ABC News’s This Week whether such comments were responsible amid mounting fears of political violence in the build up to the 5 November election. Johnson sidestepped the question, saying he had not heard the full speeches.The speaker also notably refused to answer whether Trump had lost the 2020 election, in the wake of Trump’s ongoing lies that he was the actual victor. “This is the game that is always played by the media with leading Republicans, it’s a gotcha game, and I’m not going to engage in it,” Johnson said.The former president’s wife, Melania Trump, sat down for an interview with the Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. She was asked given how close her husband had come to being shot in Butler whether she trusted the top officials of the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies who “appeared to be against President Trump and yourself from day one”.Melania Trump replied: “It’s hard to say who you really trust. You want to, but it’s always a question mark.”Melania Trump, who is promoting her book, Melania, also spoke about her pro-abortion stance which she revealed in the volume. She said her husband had always known her convictions.“He knew my position and my beliefs since the day we met, and I believe in individual freedom. I want to decide what I want to do with my body. I don’t want government in my personal business,” she said. 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