Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s interview with the ‘new, Maga-fied’ CBS program and Stephen Miller’s White House promotion
Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s strange interview with 60 Minutes and his unpopular promotion of Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff.
Jon Stewart
A week after Democrats’ decisive victories in the US midterm elections, widely seen as a repudiation of Trump, Jon Stewart checked in with the beleaguered president. “Donald Trump headed over to the newly Maga-fied CBS for a little self-soothing with one of 60 Minutes’s new correspondents, a religious conservative by the name of Ross Douthat,” he said on Monday’s Daily Show.
On the once-storied news program, Trump claimed that “we have created wealth at a level that our country has never seen before” – “including for yourself,” Douthat cut in.
“Young man, was that sass?” Stewart laughed. “Did the new Maga-fied CBS 60 Minutes just deliver sass to Donald Trump? I think you’re supposed to ‘yes, and’ not ‘yes, but’.”
Trump tried to defend himself, claiming that “everyone’s” wealth increased, but Douthat again countered: “My net worth did not go up by $3bn.”
“I think I’m going to enjoy this,” Stewart relished. “I did not come into this interview thinking: ‘Uh, I’m going to enjoy this.’ But now, as I am watching this, I am thinking to myself: ‘I am going to enjoy this.’ Let me prepare the table for the feast we are all about to enjoy. As regular viewers of our program know, Donald Trump has a somewhat high regard for his own financial acumen. In fact, not 20 minutes prior, in this very same interview we are watching, Donald Trump said this: ‘I’m really good at money and finances.’”
And yet in the same interview, Trump said of his own fortune: “I guess it’s gone up. I don’t even know.”
“My frustration with reporters is, I wish someone would, like, hammer down on this,” said Stewart. “Trump acts like he’s got all this money squirreled away in some index fund, and it just magically grew. Meanwhile, since the guy has returned to office, he’s made $125m from foreign golf and real estate schemes, $117m from legal settlements, $636m from selling that bullshit novelty meme coin. He’s gotten $800m from his World Liberty Financial crypto company. Why can’t someone just bring this up to his face?”
Douthat did, in fact, ask Trump about World Liberty Financial, which is partially owned by investors connected to the government of the United Arab Emirates. “I think if I told you that story,” he said, “and it was about the Biden family, if I said Joe Biden is the part-owner of a company and it has all of these investments from the Middle East, you would say that sounds corrupt.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” Stewart cheered, referencing the famous scene from When Harry Met Sally. “I love that Douthat is forcing Trump to compare himself to the Biden crime family.”
In response to that comparison, Trump claimed the difference was he knew “nothing about” his son’s business.
“My god, Ross, you beautiful bearded bastard,” Stewart cheered. “Do you know what you’ve just done here? Do you have any idea what you just did here? You have made Donald Trump admit that the difference between him and Joe Biden is that Joe Biden is more aware of his surroundings.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host kept track of Trump’s reaction to the midterms landslide, which quickly morphed from accepting the results to questioning the legitimacy of the results. Over the weekend, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???”
“This is how it starts,” Kimmel said. “This is how he does a little taste of conspiracy. Nothing too intense, just enough to whet your appetite. And then he feeds it a little more. It grows. The lie gets bigger. He keeps repeating it.
“And then he starts talking about people talking about him claiming the election was rigged, as if there are people other than him claiming the election was rigged,” Kimmel continued. “And before you know it, someone in a Viking helmet is making a toilet out of Nancy Pelosi’s desk. God bless America.
“I don’t think we’re prepared for the amount of insanity that this drama queen president is about to pump on us,” Kimmel added. “Donald Trump right now is a raccoon in a duffel bag. He’s been cut off at the cankles. And there are two possible paths he can take. The first one is to check out. No more meetings. Lots of trips to Mar-a-Lago. Lots of golf with Natalie running behind the cart. Every once in a while he’ll host a Super Bowl team. That’s the best case scenario.”
But the host also saw a different, much darker future on the horizon. “Scenario number two is he goes nuts. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining nuts. Everybody who works for him gets the axe. He turns on anybody who might possibly want to succeed him, whether that be Lil Marco or JD Vance. Even his own son. Even if Don Jr decides to run for president, his father will say and do anything he can to destroy him. Because he wants to make sure no one but him will ever live in the White House again. He might knock down the rest of it for all we know.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers post-gamed the midterms. “The GOP is furious with Trump and blaming him for their historic drubbing, which might be why Trump is suddenly pretending to strike a more conciliatory tone,” he noted.
In that 60 Minutes interview, Douthat asked Trump: “If it took six months of not insulting the Democrats to get a deal done, do you think you could do it?” Trump, who had just called the Democrats “dumb-ocrats,” answered: “Very easily.”
“Very easily?!” Meyers marveled. “You couldn’t even get through the question without insulting Democrats. He’s like a guilty dog who also offers up more things he did.”
But despite his gesturing at conciliation, Trump this weekend promoted Stephen Miller, the hardline architect of the president’s unpopular immigration crackdown, to the new White House chief of staff. “It’s especially absurd that Trump would promote the most unhinged member of his staff, given that he also specifically cited immigration as an area where he could like to compromise with Democrats,” Meyers said.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Trump conceded that his hardline immigration policy “might be too tough”.
“Stephen Miller is the guy who created that policy!” Meyers exclaimed. “Why are you promoting the guy responsible for the thing you admit people hate! It’s like if Subway made Jared Fogle their CEO.”
“How can Trump say that he wants to work with Democrats on immigration while promoting Stephen Miller at the same time?” he concluded. “It may seem contradictory, but there’s actually a very simple answer: he doesn’t give a shit. He has no idea what his own government is doing and he doesn’t care. His biggest priorities right now are making money and building his ballroom.”
