Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers gape at Gov. Ralph Northam's blackface debacle, refusal to moonwalk away
"Good news for the president out there — for one day, he's not our most embarrassing elected official," Stephen Colbert said on Monday's Late Show. That would be Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who we just learned had a photo of a man in blackface and a man in a KKK outfit on his 1984 medical school yearbook page. "Now I know that looks bad, but it's actually very, very bad," Colbert said. On Friday night, Northam apologized but on Saturday, "when people still wanted him to step down, he had a change of heart — and of memory," saying he discovered he isn't in the photo.
Amazingly, Northam then acknowledged he did put on blackface another time when he won a dance party dressed as Michael Jackson. "You might want to learn to moonwalk away right now," Colbert advised. "Maybe moonrun."
"Yo, this guy's a legend," Trevor Noah marveled at The Daily Show. "His new defense is that he knows he didn't do this blackface because he clearly remembers doing a different blackface?" And the details are even worse. "I'm sorry, how did he already know it's hard to get the shoe polish off your face?" Noah asked. "Because at first it sounded like he made a mistake. Now it sounds like he's a blackface connoisseur."
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This should be "pretty straightforward," Seth Meyers said at Late Night: "If you're caught doing something that horrific and your entire party tells you to quit, you resign, end of story." Instead, Northam kept digging. Like Colbert and Noah, Meyers was amazed Northam would've moonwalked for reporters if his wife hadn't stopped him. "Basically every major Democrat in the state of Virginia and Washington and across the country has called on Northam to resign," but Donald Trump Jr. still "tried to use the Northam scandal against Democrats," Meyers said. "Your dad is the birther who proposed a Muslim ban and said Nazis are fine people, so maybe sit this one out." Watch below. Peter Weber
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