Late Night Tackles the Trump Administration
Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and Jordan Klepper roast Ben Carson's furniture budget, say bye to Hope Hicks
HUD Secretary Ben Carson's getting unwanted publicity, thanks to some very expensive furniture taxpayers bought for his office. "Does Ben Carson think a good chair costs $5,000? This guy would be the worst Price is Right contestant," Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's Daily Show. But it's more than just "gold-plated chairs," he said, pointing to Carson's $31,000 office dining set and $165,000 of "lounge furniture." Carson has other scandals, too, he added, but that "hilarious" Fox News flatulence episode can't "distract us from the real issue: While supporting deep budget cuts to his department, Carson is spending lavishly on dining sets and lounge furniture and $5,000 chairs, which is not okay."
The Opposition's Jordan Klepper disagreed: "$5,000 can't even buy a decent chair, and you need that decent chair — as opposed to an indecent chair, which is what Mike Pence calls any piece of furniture that's been sat on by a woman." Klepper framed Carson's scandal as part of a media assault on Trump's staff, including the overworked Jared Kushner ("If I didn't know better, I'd almost think [Trump] was trying to saddle this guy with too many responsibilities so he could steal his wife") and departing White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Hicks admitted to House investigators she's told "white lies" for Trump, Klepper said, but "if she ever ends up having to commit white perjury in front of a probably white judge and gets convicted of a white crime, she can rest easy because if there's one thing I know about white crime, it's that you never go to jail for it. The worst that could happen is you resign to bigger and better things," as Hicks did Wednesday.
On Late Night, Seth Meyers found Carson's furniture budget extravagant and hypocritical: "$5,000 for a chair? Was it a dentist's chair? Although that would make sense, as Ben Carson always seems like a guy who is waiting for the nitrous to wear off." Peter Weber