Late-night hosts on Thursday discussed Donald Trump’s proposed tax reform, reports of his dissatisfaction in the White House, and the systemic sexism that has for years allowed both Trump and Harvey Weinstein to evade accountability amid multiple sexual harassment allegations.

Late-night TV on Weinstein: 'The second giant vortex of destructive moisture named Harvey' Read more

“For the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has been the president of Busytown,” Stephen Colbert began. “This morning he signed an executive order to get rid of some key provisions of Obamacare – for instance, the ‘care’ part.”

Colbert showed footage from a gathering in the White House on Wednesday, where Trump intended to sign an executive order that would halt payments to insurers, a first step towards dismantling the Affordable Care Act. After Trump’s speech, he began to leave the room before Vice-President Mike Pence had to remind him he hadn’t yet signed the order.

“He forgot to sign the order,” Colbert said. “That’s troubling. At the signing, he forgot to do the signing. But on the plus side, let’s hope he forgets the launch codes.”

“And last night, Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania promoting his new tax plan in front of a group of truckers,” the host continued. “Now, tax reform can be complicated, so Trump summed it up in two simple words.”



Colbert then showed a clip from Trump’s speech, where he called the reform “huge” and then said “rocket”, adding: “You know what we’re talking about, folks.”

“No, no, we don’t, you just put two random words together,” Colbert replied, before imitating the president. “Two words that describe my plan for Middle East peace: wallet and banana. You know what I mean? Banana.”



“I still don’t really know what he means but he attempted to explain, sort of,” Colbert said. At the speech, Trump said his plan took the tax code “from eight tax brackets down to four, cuts the corporate tax rate from much more and equal to 35% and brings it all the way down to 20% and cuts tax rates for small business to the lowest level in 80 years.”

“Bottom line, he’s taking our tax plan back more than 80 years to 1930s,” Colbert said. “The era that will forever be known as the Great Happiness.”



Seth Meyers of NBC discussed the similarities between Trump and Harvey Weinstein, both of whom have been accused of sexual harassment.

“This week, we’ve seen examples of powerful men at the highest levels of entertainment and politics abusing their power to silence, bully and coerce,” Meyers began. “Of course, we have a president who built his political career almost entirely on bullying. His campaign and now his presidency have been, in many ways, a performance of dominance, a performance that in many cases has been explicitly misogynist.”

Referring to a Vanity Fair report this week documenting growing concerns by the president’s cabinet members about his job performance, Meyers said: “Trump is so unqualified for his job that in the last week a Republican senator has described the White House as ‘adult day care’, and people close to the president have called him ‘unstable’ and ‘unraveling’. One adviser said aides were relieved when Trump declined to appear on 60 Minutes last night because he’s lost a step.”



“He’s lost a step?” Meyers responded. “He didn’t have that many steps to begin with. Trump is apparently so clueless that when one of his closest associates warned him that he was in danger of being removed from office, Trump had no idea what he was talking about. Several months ago, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th amendment, the provision by which a majority of the cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th amendment, Trump said: ‘What’s that?’”

Meyers then discussed Trump’s threat to journalists earlier this week, when he called it “disgusting” that they can “write whatever they want”, and Trump’s own history of smearing those who have accused him of sexual assault.

“Of course, it should not surprise us that Donald Trump is now trying to silence and bully journalists,” the host said. “It’s worth remembering that almost a year ago exactly, Trump tried to silence and bully the 12 women who accused him of sexual harassment, by viciously attacking them and even threatening to sue them.

“Donald Trump is perhaps the most famous example of this kind of abuse of male power, but he is by no means the only one, as we learned yet again when arguably the most powerful man in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein, was accused by at least 25 women of sexual harassment and, in three cases, rape,” Meyers explained.



The Weinstein allegations Read more

The host then showed Page Six coverage alleging that Weinstein had been defiant in response to the allegations, and that he had plans to return to the industry “next year”.

“Next year? You think you can come back in a year?” asked Meyers. “If Weinstein had himself cryogenically frozen and woke up a thousand years from now, the headline would still be ‘Too Soon, Creep’.”



“But I suppose it’s not surprising that Weinstein would defiantly plot a comeback just days after being accused of sexual assault given the perverse ways he and his team tried to rationalize his behavior,” Meyers said, referring to Weinstein and his legal team’s insistence that the producer is “an old dinosaur learning new ways”.



“Dinosaurs don’t learn new ways,” said the host. “They go extinct. If you’re a dinosaur, then this is your Ice Age, buddy.”

