Stephen Colbert

As Tuesday was the final night before the start of televised impeachment hearings on Donald Trump, Stephen Colbert graced The Late Show with an “impeachment tree”, topped with the transcript of the president’s “perfect” phone call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, “quid pro snow” ornaments and “Lindsey Graham’s balls” (“He’s not using them these days,” explained Colbert).

Closed-door testimonies conducted before the public hearings are already “making it hard on Trump defenders”, said Colbert. The Texas congressman Mac Thornberry, for example, said on ABC on Sunday that Trump pressuring a foreign leader to investigate his political rivals was “inappropriate” but not “impeachable” because “there’s not really anything that the president said in that phone call that’s different than he says in public all the time”.

“So what?” asked a skeptical Colbert. “Just because you publicly brag about a crime doesn’t make it legal. The cops won’t leave you alone just because you put up a sign that says: ‘I heart my murder shed.’”

Trump, not liking this strategy, tweeted this weekend: “Republicans, don’t be led into the fools trap of saying it was not perfect, but is not impeachable. No, it is much stronger than that. NOTHING WAS DONE WRONG!”

His logic amounted to “Guys, guys, remember – we’re all telling the cops it was a perfect bachelor party,” Colbert said, imitating Trump. “Nothing was done wrong; the stripper was dead when she showed up.”

Meanwhile, Trump has sought to distract from the damning evidence of his phone call with Zelenskiy in July by promising to release, at an unspecified time, the transcript from an earlier phone call with the Ukrainian president. “Mr President, if you’re claiming the first is the most important of something, there are two additional wives who might disagree with you,” Colbert said.

Jimmy Kimmel

“In Washington, the president is melting down,” said Jimmy Kimmel on the eve of televised impeachment hearings. To counter the start of public hearings on Wednesday, “Trump is planning a bigly reveal of his own”, said Kimmel – the transcript of what he called his “first, and therefore more important, phone call with the Ukrainian president”.

Kimmel wasn’t buying it. “The only way the first phone call would be more important than the one we just read is if it turns out Trump said: ‘Listen, Zelenskiy, in a couple months, I’m gonna call you, and as a joke, I’m going to try to extort you.’”

Kimmel also touched on a memo obtained by Axios outlining Republican talking points to defend Trump throughout the hearings – for example, that he didn’t do anything wrong because he had an “innocent state of mind”.

“Something I think we forget is that Trump wants us to believe the reason he held up the aid money and demanded investigations is because he was concerned about corruption in Ukraine,” Kimmel marveled. “The guy who had to pay out $25m for a fraudulent university wants us to believe he cares about corruption in a country he definitely couldn’t find on a map. There’s no way.”

Trevor Noah

“In the three years Donald Trump has been president, America has changed in many ways,” said Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. “The country is more divided than ever, official government policies are now announced on Twitter, and the red phone in the White House now connects you directly to KFC.” One change Noah didn’t expect from this presidency? An explosion of books, from anti-Trump books to ones calling him “the second coming of Christ”.

“Who could’ve ever predicted that so many books would exist thanks to a president who can’t read?” Noah said.

These tell-all ex-Trump staff books expose a shocking truth that working for a president who is frustrating and exhausting is… frustrating and exhausting 😲 pic.twitter.com/O52CKWFnc5 — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) November 13, 2019

Many of these books are written from people inside the Trump administration, such as former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, whose recently released book, With All Due Respect, puts the former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson on blast for undermining Trump.

“On the one hand, I understand where Nikki Haley is coming from,” said Noah. Trump won the electoral college, “so his policies are what people voted for. His staff shouldn’t try to undermine him. On the other hand, this is also the same president who suggested nuking hurricanes, so maybe cockblocking him is a good idea?”

Another book offered the opposite argument; A Warning by an anonymous Trump official portrays a dangerously unstable president requiring constant vigilance. “I don’t get it – we all know this stuff already,” said Noah. “This is like a spy coming out of Russia like, ‘You didn’t hear it from me, but Russia is very big.’”

And then there’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who claims to have unique and relevant information on the Ukraine deals for which Trump is being investigated, but is holding off on revealing it and has a $2m book deal.

From Haley to Anonymous to Bolton, “beneath it all, these books are trying to do the same thing: profit off the chaos”, said Noah. “Because these books don’t help the country – they just trade on rumors and innuendo to make the authors money.

“If someone has valuable information about the president they should just tell the American people, instead of just holding out for a big payday.”