Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers celebrated the defeat of Trump loyalist Madison Cawthorn in the North Carolina Republican primaries on Tuesday, which will end the 26-year-old freshman congressman’s scandal-ridden term in office. “Oh Madison, you may be gone but soon you’ll be forgotten,” the Late Night host said. “At least now he’ll have more time for his other jobs – starring as, I don’t know, the bad boy villain in a CW drama?”
Cawthorn, once seen as a rising star within the party, faced an aggressive opposition campaign waged by fellow Republicans disgruntled with his antics – calling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a “thug”, for example, as well as accusations of insider trading.
“I will say, it’s a rare treat to watch Republicans tear each other apart, because when Republicans decide to knife each other, they hold nothing back,” Meyers said. “Democrats just snipe at each other on cable news about who’s responsible for their poll numbers.”
“They’re like the Wasp-y Connecticut family that just passive aggressively bickers at the dinner table and then goes to bed full of quiet resentment,” he continued. “Going from that to Republican infighting is like when you date someone whose family is Italian and you go over to their house for dinner and they’re just chucking plates of spaghetti across the room.”
The last straw for many in the GOP was when, in a podcast interview in March, Cawthorn claimed to have been invited to cocaine-fueled sex parties by fellow Republicans.
“Normally I would’ve dismissed that all as ridiculous, except the GOP freaked out,” said Meyers. Nevertheless, Cawthorn still received support from Donald Trump, who posted “let’s give Madison a second chance” on Truth Social before the primary.
“‘Let’s give Madison a second chance’ sounds like something you’d hear at a sorority after a pledge barfs all over the rug,” Meyers joked.
“Cawthorn’s loss proves that the GOP establishment, if it wanted to, could easily ostracize its most toxic members,” Meyers concluded. “It just chooses not to. It has actively chosen to collude with Trump and his ilk, no matter how dangerous they are to democracy, because they think that’s the path to power.”
Stephen Colbert
And on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped the results of Tuesday’s primaries in several important states. “The results are in,” he said, “and America has upheld its proud tradition of not knowing who won,” at least in one of the most closely watched races, the GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania. As of taping, the race was too close to call, with Mehmet Oz at 31.3% of the vote and Dave McCormick at 31.1%.
“Wow, that’s a nail biter. That is stressful. And there is no better cure for stress than Dr Oz’s Raspberry Ketone & Green Coffee Bean Protein Pancake Mix,” Colbert joked, referencing the TV doctor’s long history of dubious pseudo-scientific claims.
Pennsylvania law requires a recount when the margin is half a percentage point or less, “but one Dr Oz supporter sees a way around that”, Colbert noted. That would be Donald Trump, who posted on Wednesday: “Dr Oz should declare victory. It makes it much harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they ‘just happened to find’.”
“Well, I will give him this: he is an authority on cheating. Just ask all of his wives,” Colbert quipped.
The host also celebrated the loss of Madison Cawthorn, who ostracized himself from the GOP when he told a podcast that he was frustrated by cocaine use in Washington: “Some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine in front of you,” he said.
“OK, that’s an obvious lie,” Colbert said. “If members of Congress were on cocaine, they would get a lot more done.”