Late-night hosts deconstructed the showcase that was Michael Cohen’s congressional hearing.

Seth Meyers: ‘I feel bad for the intern who had to go to Kinko’s’

“We say this a lot, but today was truly one of the most eventful days of the Trump presidency,” said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night, just hours after Michael Cohen finished his televised testimony before Congress, which demonstrated that “Republicans were clearly freaking out about Cohen’s testimony in advance”.

Meyers pointed to a tweet by Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who threatened to reveal Cohen’s alleged affairs to his wife and wondered “if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot.”

“I didn’t think anyone could out-sleaze Donald Trump but you did it, my friend,” Meyers marveled. “You were trying to intimidate a witness on Twitter. What’s next? Are you going to Instagram a photo of a brick with the caption, ‘About to throw this through your window?’”

Cohen repeated many of the allegations swirling around Trump for months: that he knew of the meeting between Don Jr and Russian officials, that he knew Roger Stone was talking to WikiLeaks about leaked Democratic National Committee emails, and that he directed Cohen to use campaign funds to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels.

In sum, Cohen “listed off a bunch of alleged crimes committed by the president on national TV” while he was in Hanoi to meet North Korean premier Kim Jong-un – “so ironic”, said Meyers, since “Trump finally went to Vietnam and he’s getting killed back home”.

One of the most stunning parts of the hearing, Meyers continued, was the stark difference in questioning between Democrats and Republicans. Many congressional Republicans refused to ask about the president’s alleged crimes; one, Paul Gosar of Arizona (whose own siblings memorably endorsed his opponent in 2018), brought a large posterboard of Cohen’s face that blared “liar, liar, pants on fire”.

“I feel bad for the intern who had to go to Kinko’s and print out a giant copy of Michael Cohen’s face,” Meyers joked. “Can you imagine what the employees at Kinko’s thought? ‘Oh, is this for some kind a joke?’”

“No, it’s for Congress,” he answered, shaking his head. “This is a thing for Congress.”

Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Trump raging around his hotel room in his underpants’

From Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also picked up on Republicans’ faux righteousness over Wednesday’s hearing. “The Republicans were relentless in their blind defense of the president,” he said. “Their strategy today seemed to be, ‘We don’t believe this liar. We believe the other liar.’”

In all seriousness, Kimmel said it’s “disturbing to me that these Republicans … seemed to have no interest whatsoever in learning whether or not the president committed a crime”. They barely asked questions about the president’s conduct; in fact, “they didn’t even pretend they cared”.

Instead, Kimmel said: “They were behaving like they had this image of Trump raging around his hotel room in his underpants watching them on TV, so they had to make a stand.”

It was a truly a marvelous performance of political bluster, Kimmel continued. “I haven’t seen acting from Republicans like this since Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way.”

There were some humorous moments, however, such as Cohen’s claim that Trump was so insecure about his past grades that he directed Cohen to intimidate his alma maters into not releasing them.

It is funny – until you remember that Trump is currently in talks with Kim. “Don’t anyone panic, but he’s talking about the guy negotiating a nuclear arms agreement right now,” Kimmel said.

The hearing was a prime showcase for America’s partisan division, but Kimmel found one example of cross-aisle agreement: Cohen reported that Trump routinely said Donald Trump Jr has the “worst judgment of anyone in the world”.

Trevor Noah: ‘The slogan for the Trump 2020 campaign’

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah also covered Cohen’s testimony that America’s president is a “racist, a conman, and a cheat”, revelations that “would’ve been big news if it wasn’t the slogan for the Trump 2020 campaign”.

Michael Cohen spills some executive-level tea and brings receipts ☕️😲❗️ pic.twitter.com/9Irw83Xjg8 — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 28, 2019

Noah paid particular attention to the first claim – racist – which predictably drove the hearing off the rails for a time. Cohen said Trump said racist things in private, such as that black people were too stupid to vote for him.

“Black people wouldn’t vote for you, Trump, because they’re too stupid? No, Donald. Actually, the reason black people wouldn’t vote for you is because of your trash-ass weave,” Noah chided. “Also the 50 years of documented racism, but also the weave, my friend.”

The charge of racism prompted Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina to trot out what Noah called the “black friend defense” – the idea that, because Trump employed Lynne Patton, a black official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he cannot possibly be racist.

“Whenever the Trumps are accused of racism, they always bring the same woman,” Noah observed. “If you can only bring one black person every time, something tells me you don’t have black friends.”