Jimmy Kimmel and The Daily Show have plausible theories on the baffling Trump-Giuliani legal strategy

"Did you hear about that very old, very scary volcano that erupted over the weekend?" Jimmy Kimmel asked on Monday's Kimmel Live. "Well, his name is Rudy Giuliani." After his disastrous media blitzkrieg last week, Giuliani appeared on ABC's This Week and spouted a bunch of barely decipherable nonsense about Trump's payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, Kimmel said, and he knew it was gibberish because he went through it on a chalkboard.

"But I think I know what's going on here," Kimmel said. "I think their strategy right now is to put someone out there who's even nuttier than Trump to make him look normal by comparison, and it's working."

At The Daily Show, Trevor Noah wasn't so sure. "Do you think the president regrets bringing Giuliani onto the team? Because this feels like a total mess," he told correspondent Michael Kosta. "Rudy Giuliani is a legal wizard, and this is his Fantasia," Kosta said. He skillfully recapped Giuliani's contradictory statements over the past week in 40 seconds, sowing "reasonable doubt," then laid out Giuliani's "airtight" gambit, "the 'Scumbag Defense.'"

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"All Rudy said was that the president might regularly pay women to be silent about affairs," Noah said. "Exactly," Kosta explained. "You see, paying off Stormy Daniels is only illegal if Trump did it to help his campaign, but if Trump was paying hush money to women all the time, then it wouldn't be for the campaign. It's just a reoccurring expense he barely pays attention to, like a cable bill or child support."

"So the bigger a cheating scumbag Trump is, the less likely it is that this hush money broke any laws?" Noah asked. "Bingo," Kosta said. "And that's why Rudy is a genius. All he has to do is prove to a jury that Donald Trump is a bad person, and there's not a jury in the world that would rule against that." Watch below. Peter Weber