Late Night Tackles Trump versus Mueller
Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper disagree on Trump's self-pardoning prowess, agree it's odd to suggest murdering James Comey
"One of the president's top selling points during the campaign was that as a man of the people, he was going to make sure the elites would be treated exactly like everybody else — that's what Trump said, especially when it came to the law," Trevor Noah said on Monday's Daily Show, showing clips. "Unlike 'Crooked Hillary' and 'Black Barack' Obama, Trump did not think anyone was above the law, including himself." Then Robert Mueller came calling.
Now, Trump and his lawyers are arguing that the president can't, by definition, obstruct justice, and if he could, he can't be charged with any crime, and even if he were, he has absolute power to pardon himself — "essentially, that the president is above the law," Noah said. "Which makes sense. I mean, we all remember when the founders were like, 'You know what America needs? A king!'" He said he understands the legal argument, "but I do think it's a little weird that of all the examples they could have picked, they went with murdering James Comey."
Monday was Trump's 500th day in office, and "I wish I could go over all of our president's incredible wins," Jordan Klepper said at The Opposition. "Things like teaching Boy Scouts about yacht orgies, or increasing Frederick Douglass awareness, making Jake Tapper say 'sh-thole.'" But he decided "to focus on Trump's latest distinction," he said: "Trump has elevated the office of the presidency so high that it's currently located above the law."
As Rudy Giuliani argued Sunday, "President Trump couldn't even be indicted for murder — which is an incredibly normal thing to say if you're the lawyer of a man whose wife hadn't been seen in 24 days," Klepper said. He brought out Kobi Libii to "weigh in on these complex legal issues," and Libii turned "self-pardoning" into a legally appropriate but borderline NSFW metaphor. Watch below. Peter Weber