Late-night hosts on Thursday discussed Donald Trump’s false claims about the number of viewers who tuned into his State of the Union speech and congressional Republicans’ efforts to discredit the Russia investigation.

Stephen Colbert

“The president today is still basking in the afterbirth of his State of the Union,” Stephen Colbert began, reading Trump’s tweet in which he claimed the 45.6 million who watched his address was the most ever.

Late-night hosts call Trump's State of the Union a 'glass half-full of cyanide' Read more

“First: that’s not true,” the host replied. “Second: it’s a lie. 45.6 million isn’t the record because Obama’s first State of the Union had 48 million viewers, and the most-viewed is Bill Clinton’s in 1993 which had 66.9 million viewers.

“It doesn’t matter how many people watched,” Colbert continued. “But what does matter is that the president needs to lie about it. And then somehow get away with it. This is the new world we live in. So let me say in advance: congratulations to President Trump on winning the Super Bowl.”



The host then showed footage from Trump’s speech in West Virginia following his address. There, he touted the number of people who watched, claimed that Senator Orrin Hatch called him the greatest president in history, and complained that Democrats failed to applaud when he mentioned low black unemployment numbers.

“Yeah, you’d think the Democrats would applaud since that’s all because of Obama,” the host quipped, before impersonating Trump. “‘I don’t get why black people don’t like me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to call Jay-Z a son of a bitch on Twitter.’”



Trevor Noah

Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah comprehensively detailed the GOP’s ongoing attempts to release a controversial memo intended to paint the FBI and DoJ as biased against Trump.

“What Republicans have done is they’ve created a four-page memo accusing the FBI of improperly obtaining a warrant to wiretap a Trump campaign aide in 2016, a man by the name of Carter Page,” Noah began. “Mind you, this memo is not a report. It’s not a formal finding. It’s not even an official document. It’s like a sticky note from Congress.”

“Four pages to discredit the entire FBI?” Noah asked. “That doesn’t seem like enough detail. I’ve had CVS receipts with more detail than this memo.”

He then added that the memo was written by “House Intelligence Chairman and guy with resting middle-management face, Devin Nunes”, who had recused himself from the investigation after he was caught sneaking to the White House to show Trump secret evidence. “He’s as credible as a white man selling jerk chicken,” Noah joked.

Trevor Noah on the Nunes memo.

“But the Republicans don’t need credible to advance their narrative,” the host continued. “All Nunes has to do is say he has something important and damning, and the propaganda machine will do the rest.”



Noah went on to explain how Nunes has eschewed the usual channels by which documents containing classified information are reviewed. Federal law enforcement officials, including Trump appointees Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray, are reportedly concerned the memo contains “inaccuracies” and a “slanted narrative”.

Noah continued: “You see, it’s hard to argue that this is an ongoing FBI/DoJ conspiracy against Trump when the people in charge of the FBI and the Mueller investigation are people that Trump personally picked. Although, in Trump’s defense, just because he picked someone doesn’t mean that they don’t hate him,” the host joked as a photo of Melania Trump appeared on the screen.

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel also addressed the memo imbroglio.

“Devin Nunes is somehow still in charge of this Russia investigation in the House in spite of the fact that he recused himself from the investigation after he got caught sneaking to the White House to share information with the people he was supposed to be investigating,” the host explained.



“To call Devin Nunes Donald Trump’s lapdog would be an insult to dogs and laps,” Kimmel said. “He’s more of a retriever: here boy, go write me a memo to smear the FBI.”



Kimmel then launched into a broadside about Trump’s treatment of both the media and law enforcement: “Here’s how our government works now. If your party is in charge, you can lie, you can cheat, you can game the system to benefit your buddies. You can basically do whatever you want. And then when a newspaper digs whatever you did up and publishes a story about it, you don’t just attack the facts, you don’t just attack the story, you attack the newspaper.”

“That Stormy Daniels story,” Kimmel noted. “The newspaper that published the report about Trump paying her off? That was the Wall Street Journal. Do you know who owns the Wall Street Journal? Rupert Murdoch. The guy who owns Fox News, and the first four hours of the president’s day every day.



“Once the media is playing defense, you climb another rung,” Kimmel said. “When the FBI steps in and starts sniffing around and handing out subpoenas, what do you do? Same thing you ways do. You discredit the FBI. You discredit the special counsel.

Trump accuses top FBI and justice department officials of bias in Russia investigation Read more

“Never mind the fact that most of the people you say are against you are lifelong Republicans,” Kimmel noted, “like Robert Mueller, who voluntarily enlisted in the marines to fight in Vietnam, who served as US attorney, who prosecuted John Gotti, who was named director of the FBI by President Bush.”

