Late Night Tackles the Trump Administration
Trevor Noah found the fatal flaw in the White House leak-quashing strategy
"The Trump White House has been plagued by incessant leaks, and judging by his tweets, the president has had enough," Trevor Noah said on Tuesday's Daily Show. President Trump is particularly incensed about the latest big leak, the comment from a staffer about Sen. John McCain "dying anyway," because "it's made the White House look even worse than usual," Noah said, briefly running through the history of the Trump-McCain feud, ending on McCain requesting that Trump skip his funeral.
That's "the highest level of dis possible, to uninvite someone to something you're technically not really gonna be at," Noah laughed. "Personally, I would want Trump at my funeral, because I know that he'd hate being at an event that wasn't about him. You know, he'd be like, 'I can be in a hole, too, folks! I was also dead — they said I was dead, folks, 270 Electoral College votes, but I got them!'"
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a meeting to chastise staffers for leaking, and of course it immediately leaked. "So now, the leakers are leaking leaks about a meeting about what leaked," Noah said. "This is like in a relationship when you're having an argument about how much you argue." But not only is the White House not apologizing about the comment, killing the story; they won't even talk about it. "I understand what's happening here," Noah said. "In Trump's world, if you apologize, you're admitting that it happened, and for Trump, that's a sign of weakness. But here's the thing: Just because it wasn't meant to get out doesn't mean you can expect everyone to act like it didn't happen. That's not how this works." He illustrated his point by trying Sanders' tactic in a hypothetical court of law.
In Late Night's choose-your-own-response press briefing, Seth Meyers got a different kind of leaking answer out of Sanders. Watch below. Peter Weber