Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert opened Thursday’s Late Show monologue on Jacinda Ardern’s resignation as Prime Minister of New Zealand, saying she “didn’t have enough in the tank left” to get the job done. “It’s time,” Ardern, who has been in office for six years, said in her announcement.
“Wait a minute – she’s leaving because it’s the right thing to do?” Colbert marveled. “She didn’t lose an election or steal secret documents or have a sex party with Boris Johnson? Are you Kiwis sure you know how democracy works? Ever have a troubled pillow salesman?
“You’re the only world leader I’m friends with,” he lamented, playing a clip from his visit to New Zealand with Ardern (the duo drove through Auckland and also had a barbecue with Kiwi pop singer Lorde). “Don’t make me hang out with Justin Trudeau! Sure, it’s pretty to look at, but it smells like hot yoga and Putin.”
Colbert urged Ardern to rest “because we need you to come to America in 2024 to run.” You may be a Kiwi, but at 42 you are constitutionally old enough to be a president’s grandchild.”
In American political news, Colbert touched on another complication in the backstory of disgraced GOP Congressman George Santos. According to new reports, the New York Republican appeared as a drag queen at Brazilian pageants. “Wow, George Santos did something interesting!” Colbert laughed. “All of his other lies are super boring, like ‘I worked at a bank’ or ‘My mom is a volleyball player.'”
Santos reportedly performed under the stage name Kitara Ravache. “Really? He went with that?” said Colbert. “I would have gone with something fun, like Anita Alibi or Ivana Pawnyourjewelry.”
Santos has denied his past as a drag queen, “and I can see why,” Colbert said. “His party, the GOP, last year declared war on drag queens across the country. They don’t care that Santos is a serial liar who steals money meant for dying dogs. But for Republicans, finding out he’s doing drag would be just as bad as finding out he officiated a marriage between green M&M and a Covid vaccine.”
Seth Meyers
On “Late Night,” Seth Meyers rejoiced that “GOP fighting has gotten so bad that even once allies are now bitter foes.” Rep. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, were once friends but ended up on opposite sides in the battle for Speaker of the House.
The two reportedly got into an argument in a bathroom outside the home. “Well, I guess that answers the riddle, ‘What’s worse than fighting Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert? Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert fight in a room with Echo,'” joked Meyers.
Greene “strikes to me like the kind of person who would wait in a toilet stall until they heard someone talk shit about them and then just kick open a door like a cowboy barging into a saloon,” he added.
Summing up the days of George Santos drama, Meyers said, “He lied about so many things, we don’t even know if his name is George Santos.”
Santos has repeatedly dodged questions from reporters about his possible resignation – even members of his own party have urged him to do so – by jumping in congressional elevators. “What would this guy do without elevators?” Meyers wondered. ‘He’ll have to live in one. When he gets in, he probably just presses every single button.
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“That’s what happens when you’re a party to Trump: you attract scammers like George Santos,” he concluded.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel reviewed Donald Trump, who “did everything in his power to whine that he, the guy who has refused for so long to return the top-secret documents he stole, that the FBI had to come and take her from him, was treated unfairly”.
As Trump put it in a recorded speech for supporters, “We have two standards of justice in our country: one for people like you and me…”
“Wait, who’s like you?” Kimmel interjected. “Nobody is like you! You are the only one. I can say one thing about him – he is unique. And thank God I don’t think we could handle more than one Donald Trump. Can you imagine two Donald Trumps? They would hate each other first of all.
“I love this idea he’s throwing out there that he’s a regular guy,” Kimmel said, “just born in billions, boarding school, Wharton Business School, Joe six-pack with a gold toilet and his name on every flat surface he.” sees. He’s one of us!
“It’s funny to watch because on the one hand Trump is thrilled that they found these documents in Biden’s house, but it also reminds everyone that they found 15 times as many documents in his house,” he added. “So now his goal is to make it look like the Gulf mausoleum where he lives in Florida is some kind of Fort Knox.”
An argument that doesn’t stand up, Kimmel said, because “Mar-a-Lago is a wedding venue. There are hundreds of drunk strangers doing the chicken dance in this building every weekend.”