Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s controversial $1.76bn settlement with the IRS and the latest on his taxpayer-funded ballroom renovations. On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host remarked that there was “just so much lying and stealing and grifting and cheating in the news today,” and that Trump was focusing on the “most important issue that we face as Americans” — his $1bn ballroom.
After sharing footage of the president’s incoherent presentation of plans, Kimmel said: “I’m starting to get the idea Blob the Builder doesn’t know much about construction either.” He added, “can you imagine the Iranians watching that this morning?” as Trump was minutes away from his latest purported deadline. “If he wasn’t so dumb it might be diabolical but it isn’t, he’s dumb,” Kimmel said.
Trump later backed down, and Kimmel noted that this often takes place on a Tuesday. “I think it’s because he has more free time on the weekends to make threats,” he said. While various polls have shown that Americans are consistently against war with Iran, Trump has said that he both acknowledges and rejects this. Kimmel called it “all you need to know about this man” and “about as stupid a sentence as I’ve ever heard in my life.” He concluded that “Trump has no exit strategy for Iran.”
Kimmel then moved on to what he called the “most brazenly corrupt move by any president ever.” In January, Trump sued his own government for $10bn because someone at the IRS leaked tax returns he had been “promising to show us for the last 11 years.” Kimmel called it the “legal equivalent of sitting on your hand until it goes to sleep so it feels like a stranger is touching you when you masturbate.” This week saw “both sides which were the same side” come to a settlement amounting to an apology and a fund worth $1.76bn that Trump can use to pay “anyone for anything,” including a slush fund for those involved in the January 6 riot. Kimmel jokingly referred to those who stormed the Capitol as “the great patriots.”
This week also saw Donald Trump Jr. and his bride-to-be decide against getting married at the White House over fears about the optics. “Somebody marrying Donald Trump Jr. is worried about the optics?” Kimmel asked. Instead, they will be married on a small private island in the Caribbean. “His dad used to have a buddy who owned a small private island in the Caribbean,” Kimmel said.
We also learned that Trump benefited to the tune of about $740m from various trades resulting from larger decisions he made. Kimmel called it “a smash and grab” and said “you just can’t keep track of what they’re taking.” He also took aim at Elon Musk, who has been attacking Christopher Nolan over the choice to cast Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o to play Helen of Troy in The Odyssey. Musk and other rightwingers have claimed Nolan is trying to rewrite history, yet Kimmel reminded them that it’s based on a mythical poem, something as fake as “Santa Claus or election fraud.”
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also spoke about Trump’s settlement, which was agreed without “any congressional or court approval” and saw him giving himself “a taxpayer-fueled slush fund.” Colbert called out the situation as “him on both sides” and noted that “one group of lucky slushies” was those involved with the January 6 riot. But if viewers are worried they will get their hands on it, “they won’t because Trump’s gonna steal it all.” He said that the five-person commission will just be five Marco Rubios. “Surely this can’t get more corrupt?” he asked before answering that the settlement also precludes any investigation into fraud or misuse of the funds. “It’s just an all you can fraud buffet,” he said before calling it “an unprecedented level of grift” and joking that Trump “gave himself a get out of jail free card and a way better one than Jeffrey Epstein got.”
Colbert also called out Trump for posting more “powerful AI slop,” including a baffling picture of him pressing a big red button that blows up Earth. The president called off another attack on Iran this week, and Colbert said that “these threats are getting less and less effective the more he keeps dragging them out.” He also spoke about Trump speaking to the press next to the “pile of rubble where the East Wing used to be to talk ballroom” and noted how hard it was to hear anything because of the construction. Colbert said that Trump was “just gonna keep finding louder and louder places to answer questions.”
