Late-night hosts examined a trio of perils: obstruction of justice, climate change and big pharma’s role in the opioid crisis.

Stephen Colbert

Robert Mueller may wrap up his investigation into Russia’s role in the election this week, Stephen Colbert opened on Wednesday’s Late Show. And “speaking of the Russia investigation, Donald Trump would prefer that we not speak of it”, Colbert said. “In fact, he’s tried very hard to make all the investigations of him vanish faster than a cheeseburger at bedtime.”

But Colbert was determined that the potential end to Mueller’s investigation not slink quietly into the night, instead injecting a dose of perspective on the ridiculous engine of so many comedic monologues since Trump took office.

For starters, Colbert pointed to a list compiled by the New York Times of everything Trump has tried over his two years as president to obstruct investigations against him. “We knew about his flagrant attempts to stop investigations into what Russia did to our election,” Colbert noted. But it has swirled into a resigned malaise because, as the Times put it: “Americans have lost track of how unusual his behavior is.”

“Please don’t do that,” Colbert pleaded. “Please don’t lose track. I just want to to remind you that the mildly nauseous feeling you have is because for the last two years, Donald Trump has been spinning you in a tumble dryer full of turd.”

As has become more common, Colbert tried to reframe the story beyond the daily news cycle. So much of Trump’s behavior – trusting Putin over his advisers, calling the intelligence community deep state coup plotters, turning against his whole justice department – is “not normal”, he said. “It is strange. It’s like how Jack in the Box sells tacos for some reason? It may not be illegal but it certainly violates something sacred.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team defended his two-year tweet war against Mueller’s investigation as a good thing; because he’s been “public about his disdain”, he is “hardly engaged in a conspiracy”, they told the Times.

Colbert wasted no time seeing through that deflection. “That’s your legal defense? He’s innocent because he’s not hiding it? Because I’ve definitely seen some dog sitting proudly next to a pile of poop on the floor, but I’m pretty sure I know who’s guilty.”

Seth Meyers

Over at Late Night, Seth Meyers turned his attention to Republican hysteria over the Green New Deal, the ambitious agenda put forth by House Democrats, most prominently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to pivot economic and environmental policies towards vigorously combating climate change.

The announcement of the Green New Deal a couple weeks ago, followed by Trump’s national emergency declaration, has some conservative commentators worried – what if a Democratic president declared a national emergency for climate change?

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Meyers marveled. “That’s like saying: ‘I would give this homeless guy a dollar, but you know he’s just going to use it to print out his resume and get a job.’”

“There’s a big difference between the border and climate change,” Meyers explained, because “climate change is an actual emergency”.

And while numerous scientists are ringing the alarm that the coming decade may be the planet’s last window to alter Earth’s trajectory toward devastating climate change, Trump has been (erroneously) warning supporters that the Green New Deal will take away your car. “You’re not allowed to own cows anymore,” he falsely mused at one recent rally. “Man, Trump is getting really desperate,” Meyers observed. “In two years, he’s gone from ‘They’re gonna take your guns away’, to ‘They’re gonna take your guns away’.”

Rest assured, Meyers concluded. “No one is outlawing cows. You know what we call that? Fake moos.”

Trevor Noah

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah devoted time to another national emergency: the opioid crisis. Trump may fearmonger by blaming Mexico for drugs, Noah said, but “in reality, the opioid crisis is as American as baseball or student loan debt”. Which means the villains in this story are homegrown, such as the doctors who pushed as many as 60 addictive pills on a single patient in a day.

However, “doctors like this are basically low-level henchmen”, Noah said. If you want to find the real villains in this story, “you have to go to the top of the cartel: the pharma companies that make the drugs”.

Noah turned to the “Pablo Escobar of opioids”: the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue pharma and makers of the highly addictive OxyContin, which has netted them a profit of $4bn.

“That’s right, this one family made $4bn by allegedly lying about how addictive opioids are,” Noah summarized, mincing no words. “That is straight-up evil. If your product is addictive, you have to be upfront about it. I mean, that’s why we always start our show with a disclaimer: do not consume more than three episodes of The Daily Show if you are addicted to Africans with dimples.”

In all seriousness, though, the fact that the Sacklers knew their pills were addictive, pushed them on doctors anyway, and then encouraged blaming the addicts for their criminality is, according to Noah, “genuinely pure evil”.

