Samantha Bee on Fire and Fury: 'It's the book-length version of a Trump tweet'

Trevor Noah: 'In Trump's mind, the attorney general is his personal attorney' Read more

Late-night hosts on Wednesday discussed President Donald Trump’s bipartisan meeting on immigration reform, Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, and speculation about his mental health.

Samantha Bee of TBS discussed how the revelations in Wolff’s book have distracted from the administration’s behavior.

“Last week was like a perfect storm of events designed to piss off our president,” she began. “It began with something he hates: bad press. And ended with something he hates more: women who don’t tolerate sexual assault.”



Bee then said that the week’s best piece of entertainment was Trump aide Stephen Miller’s appearance on CNN, where he had a contemptuous interview with Jake Tapper, who cut off Miller’s mic and told his guest he was performing for an audience of one.

“The reason Stephen Miller had to go on TV and pledge his loyalty to Trump is the new book Fire and Fury, which has dominated the news for a week,” Bee explained. “But fun as it is, it’s riddled with inaccuracies, thinly sourced, and full of typos.”

“Fire and Fury is basically the book-length version of a Trump tweet,” the host continued, “only vaguely truth-adjacent but incredibly distracting, which is too bad because, while everyone on cable news was fixated on Michael Wolff’s shoddy ninth-generation Xerox copy of Game Change, there were actual things happening, like, news and stuff.”



The host then showed news coverage of the administration’s plan to change questions of the US census and freeze aid to Pakistan for insufficiently cracking down on terrorist activity.

“That’s right, we’ve frozen security aid to Pakistan, but there might be some exceptions, like if Pakistan wrote some really nice tweets about the president,” Bee quipped. “Giving tons of money to a broken state like Pakistan does suck; the only thing that sucks more is not giving them money.”

Commenting on the speculation about Trump’s mental health that followed the publication of Wolff’s book, Bee went on: “Is President Trump OK? Fuck no. He thinks his microwave is listening to him and that everything is poisoned but cheeseburgers. But crazy is what the American people chose.”

Stephen Colbert began on Trump’s governing style: “Everybody is still talking about yesterday’s unprecedented White House immigration bipartisan summit. Why did Donald Trump let them keep the cameras on? People are speculating that President Trump was just trying to show that he could do his job.

“Trump clearly considered it a success, because today he did it again with his cabinet meeting, and listened to how he kicked things off,” Colbert continued, showing footage of Trump welcoming cabinet members “to the studio”.

“You’re not in a studio,” the host responded. “That’s the actual White House.”



Trevor Noah also discussed the president’s meeting on immigration, in which he appeared confused about the details regarding Daca and border security.

“Trump promised to get Republicans and Democrats into a room and yesterday, that’s exactly what he did, assembling over a dozen congressional leaders to negotiate immigration,” Noah began. “What made this meeting special is that Trump invited cameras into the room, which was mind-blowing because finally we’d get to see the president take charge. So go on, Mr President, tell these fools your position.”

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Noah then showed a clip from the meeting in which Trump says, “My positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with.”

“I love that he’s acting like a tough, in-control leader, while at the same time telling everyone he will do anything they want,” the host joked, before explaining the positions of the two parties. “Democrats want to pass Daca right now; Republicans also want to pass Daca, but only if the Democrats also agree to fund more border security and Trump’s wall.”

Noah then showed the now infamous clip of Trump agreeing to a proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein, who suggested they pass Daca and then move on to “comprehensive immigration reform”, before the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, told Trump Feinstein was not proposing a border wall. The host also showed Trump stating that, whatever both sides agree to pass, it “will be a bill of love”.

“That’s right, people, it should be a bill of love,” Noah said. “Which is ridiculous. That’s a bill that funds a 2,000-mile wall. You don’t call that a bill of love even if the wall is full of glory holes.”