Late-night hosts dissected the president’s narcissism, Deutsche Bank loans, and reparations for the descendants of slaves

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Melania’s campaign hasn’t kicked in’

After another tumultuous week of news – is the Mueller report dropping? Who’s running in 2020? – Jimmy Kimmel turned to the most reliable source of Trump drama: Twitter.

On Wednesday morning, Trump called the Republican strategist George Conway, the husband of his adviser Kellyanne, a “whackjob”, a “stone-cold loser” and the “husband from hell”.

“I guess Melania’s ‘Be Best’ campaign hasn’t quite started to kick in,” Kimmel mused, in reference to the first lady’s program to end cyberbullying.

George Conway fired back on Thursday, calling Trump “the worst kind of dumb” among other tweets that at this point “should just be called Dispatches from the guest room futon”, Kimmel joked.

Trevor Noah: Trump 'has a separate chequebook for paying off porn stars' Read more

Among the things George Conway tweeted is a list of the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, asking the president: “Which of these … do you not satisfy?”

“It’s actually an interesting question,” Kimmel responded. “In fact, I think it’s only fair to take a scientific look at this to see if maybe it has some merit.”

Kimmel then went through the nine qualifying symptoms – including “grandiose sense of self-importance”; “preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success”; “requires excessive admiration”; and “lacks empathy” – with clips from Trump’s innumerable interviews and public appearances.

His conclusion: Trump met nine out of nine criteria, a perfect score. “Congratulations, Mr President, you are the most narcissistic personality of the year,” he said.

“He’d probably be happy about it, you know?”

Seth Meyers: ‘They don’t have HR manuals’

On Late Night, Seth Meyers looked into Trump’s re-election effort, which is gearing up despite mounting concerns about the candidate at its center.

For one, most of Trump’s original campaign team – such as Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Michael Cohen – have been indicted or are behind bars, which leaves few people in senior campaign leadership roles.

In other words,“it’s really hard to make Ocean’s 12 when Ocean’s 11 is facing 15-20,” Meyers said. “If you get a job working for Trump’s re-election campaign, they hand you an HR manual and a jumpsuit.”

“I’m kidding,” he conceded. “They don’t have HR manuals.”

Also troubling the re-election team is another story this week detailing Trump’s overstated finances. According to the New York Times, in the mid-2000s, Donald Trump tried to get a loan from Deutsche Bank by inflating his net worth by $2bn, which is “like when you see a guy on Tinder who says he speaks six languages and then he takes you to Starbucks and goes, ‘Can I have a farp-a-kai-no?” joked Meyers. “You want a farp-a-kai-no? Make it doo-so.’”

However, despite knowing of Trump’s deception, the bank continued to loan him well over $2bn because “aside from his history of defaults, he was an attractive borrower”.

Meyers was dumbfounded. “That is an insane sentence! A history of defaults is what makes you an unattractive borrower.”

In sum, the report is “such a perfect microcosm of how the game is rigged for people like Donald Trump”, Meyers said.

Trevor Noah: ‘United behind the idea of hell no’

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah talked about reparations for descendants of slaves – long considered a politically radical idea, though “recently, it’s become a lot more mainstream,” he said. Well, mainstream in that “pretty much every single one of the 89 Democrats running for president has gotten on board,” with public support from Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg.

The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) Funny how it’s never the right time to fix a problem. Gun control? Too soon. Global warming? Too far away. Reparations for slavery? Too long ago. pic.twitter.com/fS2oohF2Or

Naturally, as several Democratic candidates coalesce around the idea of reparations, public conservatives are “just as united behind the idea of hell no”, such as Fox News staple Laura Ingraham. “Now to be fair, there are some people on the right who are willing to consider reparations but unfortunately, what they’re saying is that slave ship has sailed,” Noah continued, pointing to the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who questioned what metric could be used to compensate descendants “20 generations” after the end of slavery.

“You know, what’s funny is with slavery, these people are like ‘Get over it, that’s history!’” Noah mused. “But if you try to take down a Confederate statue it’s like: ‘How dare you, that’s history!’”

Noah also pointed out that, actually, slavery wasn’t 10 generations ago; there are still people alive whose grandparents were slaves and two years ago a woman whose father was a slave died at age 100.

Reparations brings up what’s “funny” about America to the South African Noah. “Whenever people want to fix a problem, it seems like it’s never the right time. Reparations? ‘Ah, that was so long ago.’ Gun control? ‘It’s too soon to talk about it.’ Climate change? ‘It hasn’t even happened yet, let’s wait for the ice caps to melt and then we’ll – what, do something? No, then it will be too soon to talk about it.’”