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      John Oliver on Signal leak: ‘Deeply unserious people doing deeply stupid things’

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      John Oliver ripped Donald Trump’s White House for the ongoing scandal of Signalgate, in which high-level administration officials used the messaging app for military strikes in Yemen, accidentally including the Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat.“The White House tried to do damage control all this week, from playing semantic games of whether they were technically war plans to hinting Goldberg somehow got himself onto the chat, something undercut by literally showing Michael Waltz, the US national security adviser, adding Goldberg in,” the Last Week Tonight host explained on Sunday evening. “And by the way, all of this was in the run up to airstrikes that are estimated to have killed up to 46 civilians on one day, which should be a scandal in and of itself.“And it’s grotesque to see the glib response in the chat afterward,” he added, noting that one official responded to the news of a collapsed building – and civilian death – with a fist emoji, American flag emoji and fire emoji.“And look, those clearly aren’t the right emojis to send after a bombing because the right emojis are no emojis,” Oliver said.“This is something of a motif for this administration: deeply unserious people doing deeply stupid things with massively serious consequence,” he added.Oliver encouraged others to “push back hard” against the administration’s behavior, translating the sentiment into “the language that they seem to prefer” – the middle finger emoji, peach, heart and American flag. Or as Oliver put it: “Go fuck yourselves, assholes. Love, America.”In his main segment, Oliver looked into the history and use of Taser stun guns by US law enforcement. The weapon is as ubiquitous in cop shows as in real life – they are now carried by an estimated 400,000 American patrol officers. “Which is obviously great news for the company that makes them,” said Oliver. That would be Axon, which has a market cap of over $40bn.Axon representatives describe the weapon as “about as non-violent as you can get”, which Oliver disputed. “I’m not sure I would describe getting shocked with 50,000 volts is as non-violent as you can get,” he said. “It certainly doesn’t sound that relaxing. There’s a reason people unwind by taking a bath with lit candles or a book instead of with a toaster.”“The reality of Tasers just isn’t that simple,” he explained. There have been multiple instances of people dying after being tased; according to a 2017 investigations, at least 1,000 people died after police used Tasers on them.But the company has worked to obscure that fact by avoiding regulation. The Taser was first invented in the 1970s using gunpowder. When the Smith brothers bought the tech in the early 1990s, they changed the prototype to use compressed nitrogen instead, thus avoiding firearm regulations. By the end of 2003, more than 4,300 police agencies were using Tasers, with plenty of positive news coverage.The company rebranded as Axon in the early 2000s and began selling police bodycams, as well, becoming what Oliver called “the TMZ of state-sanctioned violence”.Oliver broke down two of the company’s main claims: that Tasers are effective and safe. Though Axon says the Taser is effective at subduing a suspect about 90% of the time, some studies found its effectiveness rate as low as 55%, though the company complained that the study did not take into account instances when a suspect was subdued after an officer merely displayed or threatened to use a Taser. “And at that point, that’s not really about their device, is it?” said Oliver. “You could presumably get that result with a gun, a flamethrower or a magic fucking wand.”“Also when we talk about Tasers being effective – at what, exactly?” he continued. “Because it’s often a Taser being used instead of a more lethal option like a gun, and more a Taser being used instead of a less lethal option like talking to someone.”That could make the difference between life and death, as hundreds of people have died after being tased by law enforcement. The company has attributed those deaths to a condition called “excited delirium” unrelated to the weapon. And because Tasers are “virtually unregulated” by any agency, “what that means is, you basically have to take the company’s word for it,” said Oliver.Even some police officers have decried the company’s line that Tasers are safe. After a 16-year-old in Warren, Michigan, died from the use of a Taser, one officer blamed Axon for not accurately marketing the risks: “You swore that this was a statistically normal thing, that these people were not dying at any more of an unusual rate than they would have absent the Taser, you know?”“I get why he’s upset,” said Oliver. “Axon told him the Taser was basically harmless, and the truth is it’s just not. It’s like finding out that a Nerf gun was used to assassinate JFK. I don’t care if Nerf says that was a statistical anomaly, I’m not handling it the same way anymore!”As for what to do about Tasers, “it’s complicated,” said Oliver. “I don’t hate that there’s at least a theoretical alternative to guns, and I guess I’d much rather police tase people than shoot them, although my ultimate preference would be for them to do neither of those and be much more aware of the actual risks involved.”He encouraged regulatory agencies to track stun gun usage more than we already do, and noted that certain states have banned “excited delirium” as a permissible cause of death. In sum, “we shouldn’t keep using Tasers like they’re magic wands, because they’re not,” Oliver concluded, “or pretending deaths that occur after they’re used don’t happen, because they do.” More

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      Jon Stewart on GOP’s obsession with free speech: ‘It’s such blatant hypocrisy’

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      Late-night hosts talked conservatives’ hypocrisy over free speech and the Trump administration accidentally texting an Atlantic editor its war plans.Jon StewartJon Stewart was back in old-school Daily Show mode on Monday evening, pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans in power. But first, he mocked the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, whose group text on Signal regarding the administration’s plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg.“Back in my day if you were a journalist who wanted leaked war documents, you had to work the sources, meet them in a dark garage, earn the trust, pound the pavement,” Stewart said. “Now? Just wait for the national security adviser to be distracted by The White Lotus while he’s setting up his Bomb Yemen group chat.”Stewart went on: “There are certain hypocrisies and absurdities that we find in our cultural moment that make for great fodder for humorous dialogue: a facial expression, a nod and a wink. Then there are pronouncements by our elected officials, other actions by our government that are so baldly bullshit, even though you know it will have no effect, and that these powerful creatures have been genetically modified to resist shame or self-reflection of any kind, you just can’t help yourself but to go old-school Daily Show gotcha.”He specifically referred to conservatives’ obsession with “free speech” and the liberal “thought police”, while arguing in the same breath for CNN to be banned from the airwaves, among other proposed cancellations and censorship.“Generally, you’ve gotta search the archives for contradictions on one’s stated principles, dig through policy papers to uncover private actions that are undermined by someone’s public stance, but this is so blatant,” said Stewart. “I can’t wrap around it. It’s not even the hypocrisy, it’s that they so fetishize free speech, this thing that they do not in any way actually practice.”Stewart cited Trump banning the AP from the White House for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America”, and the detainment of Columbia student protester Mahmoud Khalil.“These guys don’t give a fuck about free speech,” he said. “They care about their speech. It’s such blatant hypocrisy.”Stephen Colbert“Our nation is a beautiful pastry spread of freedom and opportunity,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “And yesterday, I got a closeup look at one of the donuts that Trump has been licking” at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Colbert and a number of comedians attended in support of Conan O’Brien, who received the Mark Twain prize for American humor.“It was a great night full of life and love and laughs,” he said, but the mood in DC was “still grim”. Last week, Trump held his first official meeting with “all of his hand-picked flunkies” that appointed him to the board of the Kennedy Center, “so he knows that they’re all 100% loyal to him”.During the meeting, which was recorded and leaked to the press, Trump said he wanted to make the Kennedy Center programming “slightly more conservative” and feature more “non-woke musicals”. “Non-woke musicals, also known as any musical you take your dad to,” Colbert joked.Besides rambling on about his love for the musical Cats, Trump also put his name forward as a potential host for the annual Kennedy Center Honors. “Man alive, you could’ve given me a thousand guesses, and that would’ve been all of them,” said Colbert, himself a three-time former host of the ceremony. “I tell you what, sir, I’m willing to trade – you host the Kennedy Center Honors, I’ll be president.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also mocked the administration putting sensitive military information in a group chat with Goldberg. “In other words, our national security is being guarded by a bunch of doofs you wouldn’t trust to throw your cousin a surprise party,” he said. “No one on the chain thought to ask: ‘Who is JG? What are these initials?’ They could’ve been leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum, for all they knew.”“If Joe Biden’s top military team accidentally texted these plans to a journalist, Laura Ingraham’s erection would be so rock strong, it would break through the wall like the Kool-Aid man,” he added.“This is a crazy mistake by any definition, but you have to remember: Pete Hegseth, our secretary of defense, three months ago was a weekend host on Fox & Friends.” So his former cohost “looked at the bright side” of the story on-air.As Fox’s Will Cain put it: “What you will see is dialogue between vice-president JD Vance, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and many more, in a very collaborative, open, honest, team-based attempt to come to the right decision after years of secrecy and incompetence. If you read the content of these messages, I think you’ll come away proud that these are the leaders making these decisions in America.”“If you read the content of these messages – the point is we’re not supposed to read the content of these messages!” Kimmel exclaimed. “That is a real beauty of a spin.” More

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      Jon Stewart on Democrats: ‘It’s Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at the ineffective tactics of the Democrats while also taking issue with Donald Trump’s response to the weekend’s deadly storms.Jon StewartOn The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said that “it is Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it” in a segment devoted to calling out how poorly the Democrats have handled his second presidency.Over the weekend, Trump played golf once again, which led to a picture of him walking into an office “in his golf attire to bomb the shit out of Yemen”. In attacking the country he “continued a presidential tradition going back decades”.With the recent vote over the new Republican budget to avoid a shutdown, Democrats finally had “an opportunity to stand up” to a “wannabe tyrant”.The budget was criticised by some as a non-starter yet Chuck Schumer broke ranks and voted to move it forward. “What the fuck happened?” he asked.In an interview, Schumer said that the party would “keep at it” but Stewart joked: “Don’t you have to start it to keep at it?”In another interview, Schumer said the best time to reason with Republicans was in the gym as they are more open and less inhibited. “That’s your fucking plan?” he asked. “I’m gonna dangle my balls out of my shorts and then … at the gym?”Stewart also found footage of him saying the same thing back in 2019. “You know I’m not here to posture-shame but for a guy who seems to be spending most of his life in gym: a little less talky-talk, a little more core.”He added: “They’re only being agreeable with you because they want you to leave them alone.”Stewart also joked that “pedalling really hard and not going anywhere is a great metaphor for the Democratic party right now”.He also played a montage of Democrats comparing the state of things to a fever that will inevitably break. “These Republicans are committed to a plan born of an ideological 50- to 60-year project to remake the United States … and classifying it as a fever excuses you.”He said it “allows you to pretend that this is an issue of messaging” and that that was “no match for the game the Republicans are playing”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host said that on St Patrick’s Day it was “nice to have an excuse to drink on a Monday” given how bad things currently are.There was “a terrible weekend of deadly storms” yet the president who chided Joe Biden for being away when Hurricane Helene raged decided to play golf once again. “If you scored hypocrisy like golf he’d be 30 strokes under par right now,” he said.Trump claimed victory again but Kimmel asked: “Who are the other players in this tournament?”He joked that it could just be “Eric with his Fisher Price clubs” and demanded “a forensic investigation” into the game.Later that day, Trump finally posted that he would be praying with Melania for those affected. “Praying together might be the only activity those two do less than sleeping together,” Kimmel joked.This weekend also saw Trump get accidentally prodded by a fuzzy microphone during an interview. “How funny would it be if that happened every time he was interviewed from here on out?” he joked. More

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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s Tesla photo-op: ‘This is how oligarchy works’

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      Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump marketing Elon Musk’s Tesla cars with taxpayer money and how Trump’s tariffs are sinking the US economy.Seth MeyersThe one silver lining of the economic downturn since Trump took office, according to Seth Meyers, is that Tesla shares are plummeting too. Musk’s car company is now worth half of what it was at its mid-December peak.On Tuesday, Trump intervened to pump up Tesla’s stock price by doing a promo for the company with taxpayer money. He transformed the south lawn of the White House into a Tesla car lot, looking to “buy” a new car with Musk himself. Asked by reporters if he would pay with a credit card, Trump said he was “old-fashioned” and preferred checks.“So fun to see the crypto president just fully admit he’s still a check guy,” the Late Night host laughed.Trump also climbed into a Tesla with Musk and exclaimed: “That’s beautiful! This is a different pedal … everything is computer!”“You know, I give the man a hard time, but then he says something that really puts something into perspective,” Meyers joked. “Because when you really think about it, everything’s computers.”Musk then had to explain to Trump that driving a car is like “driving a golf cart … it’s like a golf cart that goes really fast.”“A car is a golf cart that goes really fast. I mean, is that how they have to explain things to Trump in the Situation Room?” Meyers wondered.What is Trump getting out of the photo-op? Musk already spent nearly $300m on the 2024 election and has reportedly promised to funnel another $100m directly into political entities controlled by Trump. “And it says everything about Trump that his reaction to that is: ‘Thank you for that, in exchange, I’ll buy one Tesla,’” said Meyers.“This is how oligarchy works,” he added. “If you’re favored by the regime, you get an infomercial paid for by taxpayers.“But you say something the regime doesn’t like, you get disappeared in the middle of the night without any due process or even an accusation of a crime,” he added, pointing to the story of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student and leader of pro-Palestinian protests who was arrested by immigration agents, claiming his student visa was revoked, even though he is a legal permanent resident.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert lamented the economy’s “toboggan ride to skid row” because of Trump’s tariffs. “But today, Trump implemented a plan to quell fear of tariffs with more tariffs. Remember, you’ve got to fight fire with setting our money on fire,” he joked.Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum went into effect on Wednesday, “Of course, these tariffs, like any tariffs, are a tax that we pay on the stuff that we buy,” Colbert explained, noting that the price of a new car could increase as much as $12,000. “So from now on, teenagers are going to have to try to get to third base in the backseat of a bike.”To quell outrage – even the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal called the tariffs “the dumbest in history” – Trump sent his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to make the rounds on the news. Asked by a CBS journalist if he thought the tariffs would still be worth it if they led to a recession, Lutnick answered: “These policies are the most important thing America has ever had.”“Yes, these tariffs are THE most important thing America has ever had,” Colbert deadpanned. “More important than the Declaration of Independence, more important than landing on the moon, more important than making the taco shell out of the Dorito.”He added: “You know someone is lying when they use that big of a superlative about anything.”Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also checked in on a dire state of affairs. “The prices Trump said he would lower on day one are still high, our eggs have the flu and half the Department of Education is about to get laid off,” he said.Those Department of Education employees are now at the whims of Linda McMahon, education secretary and wife of the WWE founder, Vince McMahon. “Could you imagine getting fired by the wife of the disgraced wrestling meathead? Don’t let the folding chair hit you on the way out,” Kimmel said.“Here’s a math problem: if the Department of Education has 4,000 employees, and the president cuts 50% of the workforce, how many edibles do I need to get through the next four years?”As for Trump, “he’s Thanos-ed the Department of Education,” Kimmel concluded. “Goodbye half the Department of Education. Goodbye half the National Park Service. Goodbye half of our allies, goodbye half of your 401(k). They all disappeared, and they’re not coming back.” More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump-Zelenskyy meeting: ‘Embarrassing, chilling and confusing’

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      Late-night hosts recap Donald Trump’s shocking rebuke of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a disastrous White House press conference.Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert braced himself on Monday to recap Friday’s chaotic White House meeting between Trump, JD Vance and Zelenskyy that devolved into a shouting match between the two world leaders, with Trump as the aggressor, blaming Zelenskyy for continuing Russia’s war in his country.“In just 10 minutes, Donald Trump reversed 80 years of postwar US foreign policy,” the Late Show host explained. “A mere six weeks ago, America defended democracy against autocrats and promoted free and open societies all over the world. Now, we’re on the same pickleball team with Russia. And you don’t want to know who’s pickled balls we’re playing with.“So our friends are now our enemies, our enemy is now our friend, we’re breaking up with Europe, we’re friends with Russia,” he continued. “You could argue that’s a good thing, you could argue that’s a bad thing. But what you can’t argue with is that’s the thing.”The talks, nominally to sign a deal in which Ukraine promised the US 50% of its profits from rare earth minerals, collapsed within 10 minutes. “So things were looking promising, but then everything exploded and collapsed. It’s a phenomenon political scientists refer to as the Emilia Pérez Oscar campaign,” Colbert quipped.“Zelenskyy kept reminding these numbnuts that Putin breaks every single deal he ever signs,” he added. When a reporter then asked Trump what would happen if Putin broke any deal, the president responded: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now.“Yeah, that’s how Putin’s going to break the ceasefire,” Colbert responded. “This meeting was embarrassing, chilling and confusing.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also tore into Vance and Trump for their handling of the Zelenskyy meeting, starting with Vance’s insistence that Zelenskyy thank Trump personally for US aid. “JD Vance sounds like a boyfriend who just got caught cheating for the third time – ‘You keep asking where I was last night, but have you said thank you once for the bracelet I got you!’” said Meyers.“For the record, Zelenskyy has said thank you many times, directly to the American people, in English, a language he speaks more fluently than Donald Trump,” he added.Meyers went on to note: “Diplomacy is good, we should try to achieve a ceasefire to stop the killing and bring peace, but it is possible – in fact, it’s necessary – to do that while also remaining clear-eyed about who the aggressor is. Who violated sovereignty and international law and human rights by starting the war in the first place.“But Trump doesn’t give a shit about any of that,” he continued. “All he cares about is self-enrichment and raw power and territorial conquest. That’s why he’s doing a solid for Russian oligarchs by letting them keep their superyachts.”Meyers also blasted Democrats for their feckless response, referring to comments from Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, that “we’ll need to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration.”“What is wrong with all of you?” Meyers fumed. “You want to see some mature leadership from the Trump administration? Well, I want to see all the gold in Fort Knox. And guess what? Neither of us is getting what we fucking want!“Seriously, Democrats, show some spine,” he added. “Do you want to get primaried? Why do you guys keep acting like this is your first day on the job?”Jon StewartAnd on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mulled an offer by Elon Musk to appear for an interview on the show, as long as it was unedited. “After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are. It’s unedited,’” Stewart said. “So sure, we’d be delighted.”Stewart added that he would “sweeten the pot” and keep the cameras rolling for as long as Musk wanted their conversation to last. “The interview can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be two hours, whatever,” he said.Musk later appeared to renege on his offer, posting on X that “Jon Stewart is much more a propagandist than it would seem” and not “bipartisan”.“The guy who custom-made his own dark Maga hat that he wears to opine in the Oval Office with the president who he spent $270m to elect thinks I’m just too partisan,” Stewart laughed. “I’m really not sure what he thinks bipartisan means, but it’s generally not ‘I support Donald Trump and also Germany’s AFD party.’ That’s not bipartisan, that’s just the same shit.“Look, Elon, I do have some criticisms about Doge,” he continued. “I support, in general, the idea of efficiency and delivering better services to the American public in cheaper and more efficient ways. And if you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.“But can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times? Because quite frankly, that’s bullshit.” More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s second term: ‘The last five weeks have been shock and awful’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at Donald Trump’s disastrous start to his second term as president and looked at the rising cost of food.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about his expectations versus his reality of Trump’s comeback, saying that the president has done “every terrible thing I could imagine” but that “I just never imagined he’d do all of them at once.”He said: “The last five weeks have been shock and awful.” Things have got so bad, he added, that even those within the Maga-verse have been getting “buyers’ remorse”, with reports of unhappy Trump voters.Colbert said it was “kinda hard to feel a lot of sympathy” for them, though. “They ordered the turd soup then said: ‘Waiter, there’s turds in my soup’ and then they came back four years later and asked: ‘Do you still have that turd soup?’” he joked.While Trump had promised that prices would go down on day one, his supporters “still think things are too expensive”.The last few weeks have seen “Elon slice through the federal government like a drunk raccoon with a samurai sword”.Colbert moved on to the soaring price of eggs, which may still go up even further by 41%. “This year’s Easter egg hunt is going to be The Purge,” he said.Stores in New York have been selling loose eggs for those who can’t afford a full pack and customs agents have stopped at least 90 people from smuggling them into the country.Colbert said that the head of the smuggling operation is “Pablo Eggs-cobar”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host also spoke about how bad things have quickly become under Trump, joking that he was “tired of all the winning”.He said that “no one seems to know what the hell is going on” with Elon’s ongoing “chainsaw massacre of the federal workforce”.He spoke about an email sent to federal workers asking them to share five things they accomplished last week or face job loss while also talking about Republican senators demanding a meeting with the White House chief of staff to complain about cuts.The Department of Veterans Affairs has seen 1,400 jobs cut, which is a “tricky situation for Trump” as “we know he doesn’t think much of veterans but he loves affairs”.He said that Elon had been “just about as efficient as a Cybertruck in 2in of snow”.This week has seen the far-right Republican Lauren Boebert tweet that she didn’t realise how much “distain” she had for many of these departments. “Maybe let’s not get rid of that Department of Education just yet,” Kimmel said.The Federal Aviation Administration also cancelled its major contract with Verizon to instead sign with Starlink, a company owned by Elon Musk. “Nothing shady about that at all,” he said.Giving Musk government contracts is “like putting Pac-Man in charge of fruits”.The Trump administration also claimed it would release the full list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients and flight logs this week but instead just released “binders full of information everyone already had”, which led Kimmel to say: “Everything these people do is screwed up.”He remarked that the craziest thing is that Trump was “good friends” with Epstein, something his followers have chosen to ignore. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘With this guy, every troll is a trial balloon’

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      The Late Show host delves into New York City’s congestion pricing and Bigfoot maybe becoming California’s official state cryptid.Stephen ColbertOn Thursday evening, Stephen Colbert took on a topic close to his professional home at New York’s Ed Sullivan theater: congestion pricing, a toll on most vehicles entering Manhattan’s central business district between 5am and 9pm to cut traffic and emissions.The new tax was introduced at the beginning of this year, “and it’s working”, Colbert explained, as January saw a 7.9% reduction in traffic, and the governor’s office noted that foot traffic to local businesses spiked. “Or, as the New York Times put it, ‘Ay! People are walking here!’” Colbert joked.“This seems like a good thing,” he continued, “so Donald Trump ruined it.” On Wednesday, Trump posted on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”“Yes, the classic domain of an all-powerful king, what all kings do: regulate local toll roads,” Colbert laughed. “So the president of these United States has called himself a king. Which is the thing presidents are not supposed to do.” And then the White House social media posted an image of Trump wearing a crown.“You know he’s trolling us and we shouldn’t take the bait, but with this guy, every troll is a trial balloon. So here we go: Mr Trump, America will never bow before any king … not named Burger,” Colbert joked before donning a crown from the fast food chain.Meanwhile, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, did not back down on congestion pricing, tweeting simply: “The cameras will stay on.”The new model seems likely to survive the president’s attack – the federal government already approved it last year, and it cannot unilaterally terminate a program once it’s begun. “To put that in layman’s terms: we are already said yes to the dress!” Colbert explained. “Kleinfeld doesn’t get to have it back. We’re wearing it to the wedding, dancing all night in it and then saving it for our daughter, who will hate it.”In other news, “we live in truly paradigm-shattering times,” said Colbert. “Which is why I was not surprised to be shocked by how startled I was” when this week, California introduced a bill to recognize Bigfoot as the state’s official cryptid, a creature that people believe exists without proof that it does.“Well, that’s strange and unnecessary,” said Colbert. “California already has a mystical furry creature: Randy Quaid.”If the bill passes, it will open the door for other states to officially celebrate their own cryptids, such as New Mexico’s Jackalope, the New Jersey Devil, “and of course the most hideous beast of all: the New York Giuliani”, Colbert joked. More