Stephen Colbert
The Late Show host began by expressing delight over the US team’s win over Iran at the World Cup: “It was win or go home, and we won, baby!”
Colbert called it a “tense and thrilling match” and felt comfortable about the team’s next game opposite the Netherlands. “Oh, we can take the Dutch. I assume they play in clogs,” he said.
Colbert joked that it was “great news for US soccer fans. They get to stay in Qatar and enjoy all the magic.”
He then said he was “moving on to less important contests … the midterms” before detailing how Republican officials missed a deadline for filing results in an Arizona county after complaining about missing votes. “I’m surprised you love the second amendment so much, because you keep shooting yourself in the foot,” he said.
Former president Donald Trump wrote that “Kari Lake should be installed as governor of Arizona” despite losing. “She’s not an HVAC system,” Colbert replied.
He then moved on to Trump’s widely criticised dinner with Kanye West and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, calling them both “creeps” and saying that “it’s his most upsetting meal since every other meal.”
Colbert quickly spoke about China’s zero Covid policy, which has continued with extreme lockdowns. He called it “a stark contrast to America’s policy: everyone gets Covid”.
Finally he spoke about Prince William and Kate heading to Boston, their first time in the US in eight years, which has been referred to as “their Super Bowl” by royal staffers.
Colbert joked that they would be met by the city’s own royal couple: “Mark Wahlberg in The Departed and Mark Wahlberg in Ted.”
Trevor Noah
Apparently the GOP doesn’t like the leader of their party to be splitting apps with Neo-Nazis pic.twitter.com/YuPRKEP63y
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 30, 2022
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah also spoke about Trump’s dinner with Fuentes, “a prominent white supremacist”, and said that “we don’t know exactly what happened at that dinner except that nobody ordered latkes.”
He then played footage of various Republicans criticising Trump for hosting two neo-Nazis. “It’s so funny to watch Republicans try to chastise Trump for hanging out with someone who has the exact same views as him without chastising Trump for having those views,” he said.
Noah said he was “willing to believe” that Trump didn’t know how extreme Fuentes is but “it says a lot about him that he enjoyed this man’s company and everything that he had to say”.
He added that while it is “nice to see Republican officials speak out against Trump for a change”, there tends to be a predictable formula.
He said they “get mad for a little while” but “get back together with him in the end”, adding that “Trump scandals are basically like Hallmark movies … except Trump never actually changes and becomes a better person.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host spoke about Herschel Walker running neck and neck with the incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff. Kimmel said that Republicans have been “pulling out all the stops” and that “Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham have spent more time with him than he spent with all of his children combined.”
He moved on to Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief who has thrown “his tin foil hat into the ring” to become the new head of the RNC but who has the “tendency to make big announcements that never pan out”.
Kimmel said that “you do have to admire his crack-headed optimism”, but he is being sued for $1.3bn by Dominion and is “almost certainly gonna lose” so “needs to think of higher-paying jobs like being an art thief or being Beyoncé”.
Kimmel did express concern for what will happen to Lindell’s main gig: pillows. “Donald Trump will have nothing to scream into at night,” he joked.
Trump is “bigly upset” about the investigation into classified documents he took and his part in the January 6 insurrection and is blaming special counsel Jack Smith in a recent online rant. In the same rant, though, he also admitted to taking the documents “openly and transparently”.
Kimmel said that it wasn’t “a defence, it’s a confession” and “maybe we don’t need a special counsel – he just closed the case himself.”
He added: “Trump is so scared of Jack Smith, you’d think he was a windmill.”