Late-night hosts processed the national emergency and the year since Parkland.

Stephen Colbert

Thursday’s late-night shows taped in the limbo period between the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s proclamation that Donald Trump would declare a national emergency for border wall funding and the president’s official announcement on Friday morning. But that didn’t stop Stephen Colbert from saying that the president’s attempt to procure money without congressional approval would “of course be insane”.

“It would be usurping Congress’s power. There would be immediate court challenges,” he said. Many in Trump’s own party have said it would set a terrible precedent for overreach by the executive branch. House speaker Nancy Pelosi promised a challenge in court, and warned Republicans that if Trump could declare a national emergency for an “illusion” of a crisis, “just think of what a president with different values could present to the American people”.

“Or a president with any values,” Colbert interjected. “I think about that all the time.”

Colbert also touched on another arguable national emergency in the news Thursday: the special counsel’s Russia investigation. In a clip from an interview with 60 Minutes, former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe said that his biggest priority after former director James Comey’s firing was protecting the Russia investigation so it didn’t “vanish”.

Which is important, Colbert said, because “Trump is good at making things vanish – his casinos, his airline. He has not seen his feet in years.”

Trump, of course, did not take the negative press well, and fired off a tweet calling McCabe “a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax”.

“What the hell, he’s back to Crooked Hillary and Russia hoax?” Colbert panned. “Oh wait, oh no – did someone reset Donald Trump to factory settings?”

Seth Meyers

On Late Night, Seth Meyers also reacted to the developing news of a national emergency with chagrined disbelief. “Wait, you’re declaring a national emergency?” he asked. “This is like one of those news stories where a crazy guy calls 911 because McDonald’s ran out of nuggets. There’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s – you’re the problem.”

Meyers then tuned to a speech yesterday in which Trump claimed that migrants trying to reach the US would have to be “in extremely good shape” to scale his proposed border wall. “And that makes sense,” Meyers said. “He’s in terrible shape and he can’t seem to get over it.”

Trevor Noah

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah focused on the developments in gun legislation since the Parkland, Florida school shooting on Valentine’s Day last year. Since then, state-level laws limiting access to guns outnumbered laws passed expanding gun rights for the first time in six years.

Additionally, “thanks to the Parkland kids and their allies, lawmakers weren’t the only ones making some long overdue changes”, Noah said. “They also put pressure on America’s most powerful citizens: the corporations.” Walmart raised the age limit to purchase firearms to 21, for example, while Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling assault rifles. Kroger, the nation’s largest grocery store chain, also is no longer selling guns to anyone under 21.

“Wow, ok, props to Kroger for not selling guns to anyone under 21,” said Noah, “but also, why is a grocery store selling guns?” Noah expressed disbelief that a grocery store trafficking in commercial guns was even a thing. “I mean, you know people aren’t buying them for hunting – all the food is right there.”

“This is so strange to me, I’m not gonna lie,” he continued. “America is next level – buying guns at the same place you buy your produce. How does that even work?”

Between guns (for those over 21) at grocery stores and 26 pro-gun laws passed in states in 2018, Noah observed that, when it comes to gun regulation in America, “clearly there is still a long way to go”.

But he ended on a sincere, hopeful note. “I will say this: the year since Parkland has been a historic one for gun safety thanks to the efforts of these determined kids.”