On Wednesday evening, Seth Meyers relished more details from a shocking Atlantic report from this weekend detailing alleged excessive drinking and erratic behavior by the FBI director, Kash Patel. According to more than two dozen current and former FBI officials, Patel was known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, and many people expected him to be fired for his unreachability and impulsivity.
“Generally speaking, you don’t want to hear that the country’s top law enforcement official is known for having freak-outs, you know?” the Late Night host said. “When you’re the head of the FBI, you’re supposed to be calm and level-headed. No one wants to tune into a press conference about a potential threat to the homeland and hear a guy who looks like this” – Meyers cut to a photo of Patel’s intense, slightly cross-eyed stare – “scream ‘everyone run for your lives!’
“And he always looks like that. He has resting ‘run for your lives’ face,” he quipped.
But the “most embarrassing” detail amid a string of embarrassing details, according to Meyers, was that a few weeks ago, when Patel struggled to log on to an internal system, he panicked and began to frantically call aides to tell them he had been fired by the White House.
“So he freaked out and told everyone he was fired, but it turned out it was just a technical glitch,” Meyers laughed. “In fact, one FBI official said of Patel’s freak-out, ‘It was all ultimately bullshit.’ And I, for one, think that would make a great title for the first history textbook about the Trump era.”
Patel has pushed back on the claims by suing the Atlantic for $250m and denying everything at a press conference, where he asked the audience how many people in the room believed the allegations were true.
“I do!” Meyers answered enthusiastically. “I do, I do, I do, I do, I do. I do! I mean, I don’t know for sure if it’s true, but I definitely believe it’s possible. We saw you crushing beers in the locker room after the men’s Olympic hockey team won gold. That definitely looks like a guy who might not remember his password the next day.
“I can definitely imagine you sitting down at your computer drunkenly crying because you can’t log in,” Meyers continued. “‘Why won’t the beach ball stop spinning?!’”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also mocked Patel for “getting hammered this week over a report that he gets hammered on the job.”
Patel denied all the claims “not just categorically but maniacally” by suing the Atlantic for $250m. The magazine has vowed to “vigorously” defend its reporting, which “makes it sound like Patel was blacked out more than the president’s name in the Trump-Epstein files”, Kimmel quipped.
The host then turned to another embattled Trump official: the health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who appeared at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, where Senator Elizabeth Warren “cut him like a raccoon penis” over Trump’s nonsensical claims about lowering prescription drug prices.
“He claims that TrumpRx has reduced prices by as much as 600%,” Warren said. “Six hundred per cent, which I think means companies should be paying you to take their drugs.”
Kennedy responded: “President Trump has a different way of calculating ... If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to 10, that’s a 600% reduction.“
Kimmel had choice words for Kennedy’s rationalization: “Who are you going to believe, [Trump] or math? Have you ever bankrupted a casino? I don’t think so.
“The actual math is 98%, not 600%, but let’s not get caught up in semantics,” he continued. “Let’s just be quiet and listen to Robert Kennedy breathe.”
The host then played another clip from the hearing, in which Kennedy’s rattling breath could be heard throughout the room. “You understand, our secretary of health is dying before our eyes,” Kimmel said. “And no one is doing anything about it.”
Stephen Colbert
And on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert checked in on Iran after Trump’s announcement on Tuesday indefinitely extending a ceasefire that had been set to expire within hours. “You know what? I’m beginning to think this war might not be over by Memorial Day. Which reminds me …” the host said, jokingly shipping a box of “Iran War Jokes” to Jimmy Kimmel, who would still be airing after the Late Show’s final taping next month.
But back to Iran: soon after Trump’s announcement, Iran seized two ships from the strait of Hormuz. The captured ships were the cargo vessels MSC-Francesca and the Epaminondas, “which is actually how I pronounce empanadas after a night of drinking”, Colbert joked. According to one Iranian official, “Trump’s ceasefire extension means nothing,” because “the losing side cannot dictate terms.”
Said Colbert: “Hey buddy, we’re America – we don’t lose wars! We just leave them.”
Trump “was not happy about Iran giving him the Middle East finger”, he continued, so late Tuesday night, the president posted on Truth Social that “they only say they want it closed because I have it totally BLOCKADED (CLOSED!), so they merely want to ‘save face.’”
“Sounds like someone just learned what the word ‘blockaded’ means,” Colbert said.
According to numerous reports, Trump wants out of his increasingly unpopular war. And in response to sinking poll numbers, he posted on Truth Social a New York Times report praising the ratings for the Apprentice … from April 2004. “Always a tip-off that life isn’t going great for you when you start to brag about something from 22 years ago,” said Colbert, imagining a similar scenario: “You kids think that Dad’s a loser! Well I’ll have you know that back in high school, I once won two free tickets to see the Spin Doctors in Anaheim at the Grove.”
Comment