Tom Barrack, a billionaire financier who GOP operative Roger Stone once called President Trump's "best friend", defended Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on Tuesday while speaking in Dubai on Tuesday.

When CNN's Becky Anderson asked Barrack about the effect the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has had on Saudi Arabia's global reputation, Barrack first cracked a joke before stressing that "whatever happened in Saudi Arabia, the atrocities in America are equal, or worse," per Gulf News.

Barrack said that western countries have always fundamentally misunderstood Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and, therefore, the United States should not attempt to "dictate" a moral code in the region. "The problem with the Khashoggi incident is the same problem with the West misunderstanding the East that has existed since Sykes-Picot," he said, referring to the 1916 agreement between France and the United Kingdom, in which the two powers arbitrarily defined spheres of influence in the Middle East. "The corrupt hand of the West has been the primary instigator in the kingdom," he continued.

In a report last June, The New York Times described Barrack, who has done extensive business in the gulf region, as one of the key players in forging Trump's warm relationship with the courts of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, despite the president's lengthy history of anti-Islam rhetoric. Barrack also served as chairman of Trump's inaugural committee, which is now under federal investigation. Tim O'Donnell

Update 4 p.m. EST: Barrack apologized for his comments, reports Bloomberg, saying Khashoggi's murder "was atrocious and is inexcusable ... I apologize for not making it clear at the time that I consider the killing reprehensible." He said that "the bad acts of a few should not be interpreted as the failure of an entire sovereign kingdom" and said the U.S. does constant "work to lead by example."

Ten Democratic presidential hopefuls took the stage in Miami on Wednesday night, and The Late Show thinks you can catch 'em all.

"We are live after the first of two Democratic presidential debates," and "I'm going to tell you all about it — if Bill de Blasio doesn't interrupt me," Stephen Colbert said in his monologue. This debate pitted "Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Beto O'Rourke against seven people angling for MSNBC shows." NBC had some technical difficulties, he added, "but it was an excellent dress rehearsal for tomorrow actual debate."

"The biggest early moment was a linguistic surprise from Beto O'Rourke," Colbert said. "He's either trying to lock up the Hispanic vote, or he's running for embarrassing dad at a Mexican restaurant." He suggested John Delaney was just doing this as a dare from his brother-in-law, Jay Inslee had never set foot in a McDonalds, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) made up her "all foam and no beer" zinger: "If that's a metaphor you frequently use, senator, then, as we say back in South Carolina, 'I'm a shrimp sandwich in a thunder storm.'" Colbert mocked Booker's Spanish, and Beto's, again, and stepped into the fight between Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) and Tim Ryan (Ohio): "Tulsi! Tim! Please don't fight — you're both not going to be president."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was kinder about all the Spanish spoken onstage. "I loved it because I represent the Bronx, there was a lot of Spanglish in the building," she told Colbert. "I thought it was humorous sometimes," but also "a good gesture to the fact that we are a diverse country." As for the candidates, Ocasio-Cortez said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) "knocked it out of the park," Julián Castro "did a phenomenal job tonight," and "Cory Booker did a great job in talking about criminal justice," and "there were some surprises, too," though she didn't name them. She also explained her skepticism of Joe Biden's electability. Watch below. Peter Weber

This past week has shone a spotlight on the deplorable conditions at facilities where the U.S. is holding children seeking asylum in the U.S. "Most of the kids in those overcrowded facilities come from Central America's Northern Triangle countries: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador," Samatha Bee said on Wednesday's Full Frontal. President "Trump and his supporters claim it's fine warehouse them like pallets of generic peanut butter because it's their fault for coming to America. But the truth is, the U.S. is a huge reason they were forced to flee here in the first place."

Bee's history lesson began in Ronald Reagan's 1980s and America's Cold War in Central America, and she focused on El Salvador. "When we stomped out communism, we also stomped out pretty much every thing else. For many civilians, getting the hell out of El Salvador became a matter of life or death," she said. "Many of the migrants ended up in Los Angeles, where some younger Salvadorans would wind up in street gangs," which over time became MS-13. "That's right, President Trump's favorite foreign threat was made in the U.S.A. — unlike his ties and two-thirds of his wives," she said.

And MS-13 didn't didn't turn into today's machete-wielding killers until "the American prison system helped transform them from the juvenile delinquents of the '80s to the violent gang we know today," Bee said. Then, starting in the '90s, the U.S. deported tens of thousands of gang members, "brutalized by American prisons," back to Central America, where they took root and made the Northern Triangle one of the most violent regions in the world, sending civilians feeling north for safety, she said. "It's the circle of life, except death."

"All refugees deserve basic compassion, but we owe a special debt to Central American refugees," Bee said. "At the very least, we own their kids some f---ing toothpaste." There is some NSFW language. Peter Weber

Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show was live following the first Democratic debate on Wednesday night, and he didn't spare his network, NBC, over its technical difficulties. But mostly he focused on the debate itself. He laughed at Cory Booker's face when Beto O'Rourke broke into Spanish, and imagined President Trump's reaction: "Cr-p, did I hit the SAP button?" Still, "Booker saw Beto speaking Spanish and decided to join in, too," Fallon added, though he sounded "like Arnold Schwarzenegger learning Rosetta Stone."

"As expected, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker did well tonight, but actually I though Bill de Blasio did a pretty good job too," Fallon said, expressing surprise on behalf of all New Yorkers. "Trump tweeted and called the debate 'boring,' but he still watched, even though he also said it was a 'very unexciting group of people' — as opposed to the rock stars he usually hangs out with, like Mike Pence and Steve Mnuchin. But I think I know why Trump's upset: He's probably jealous of the Democrats. If you think about it, they got to be on TV, they got to talk about themselves, and they got to be in Florida," his three favorite things.

Fallon had a short video to help everyone get to know the 20 Democrats running.

Fallon also had a song advising the Democratic candidates to avoid becoming memes, because "some things can't be unseen." He had examples, and harmonies.

Colin Quinn also had some less-helpful advice for the Democrats, or at least the ones you might not otherwise remember. Watch below. Peter Weber

The first 2020 Democratic presidential debate was Wednesday night, and it gave some of the lesser-known of the 10 candidates a chance to "go from 'Who is that?' all the way to 'Oh yeah, that guy — no, I'm not going to vote for him,'" Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's live Daily Show. "The biggest name on the state was Elizabeth Warren, polling in the lead, and she knew that she was the frontrunner," he said. "So basically it was up to everyone else to try and figure out a way to stand out."

Beto O'Rourke landed on a surefire way "to spice up a bland affair," Noah said, impressed at Beto's Spanish. "Look at how shocked Cory Booker was when Beto switched to Español. ... And while Beto O'Rourke was wowing the crowd with his fluent Spanish, Amy Klobuchar came prepared with zingers that were going to destroy the crowd. But every time she tried to land them, her time was up."

"So Warren was cruising, Beto was fluent, Klobuchar was being her moderate self, and everyone else was just figuring out how to get noticed," Noah said. "Poor Jay Inslee, he spent the night trying to order a drink from a bartender who didn't realize he was there." Policy-wise, the Democrats were mostly on the same page, though "all hell broke loose" when moderators brought up health care, he added. But "to be honest, it was a lot more exciting than most people thought. And I know Trump tweeted that it was boring, but he would always think that policy was boring, because these people had ideas, they had plans for how they were going to do it, and they had information about how they were going to run themselves from the White House."

The Daily Show also had the thrilling and entirely fictional backstory on how the 20-person Democratic field was fit on a debate stage. Watch below. Peter Weber

On Wednesday, U.S. Border Patrol gave reporters a tour of its Clint station in West Texas, described as squalid, overcrowded, lice-infested, and generally "appalling" last week by lawyers who interviewed some of the 250-plus migrant children detained there. Since then, Border Patrol moved the children to a different facility, then brought about 100 back to Clint.

"On Wednesday, the situation in Clint seemed to have improved: Children appeared to be wearing clean clothes, and at least a half dozen hallway monitors were brought in to help watch the 117 children being housed there," from a few months old to nearly 18, The Associated Press reports. The reporters were shown more of the facility than the lawyers but were not allowed to bring in cameras or talk to the children. AP's Cedar Attanasio reports that Border Patrol seems to have done a lot of work in the last five days:

Aaron Hull, head of Border Patrol's El Paso sector, said the reports of child mistreatment were "hurtful" to agents who "are risking their health, their lives, their marriages ... to enforce the rule of law humanely." He confirmed lawyers' reports that the children subsist on instant oatmeal, instant noodles, and microwaved burritos, and said they get a new toothbrush every night.

Earlier Wednesday, the lawyers who represent all migrant children under the Flores settlement asked a federal judge to immediately require inspections and doctor visits at border facilities like Clint, and order the prompt release of children to parents and close relatives. The detained children, classified as unaccompanied minors, are supposed to spend no more than 72 hours in Border Patrol custody, but one of the Flores lawyers, Warren Binford, told The New Yorker that almost none of the children they interviewed at Clint "came across unaccompanied. The United States is taking children away from their family unit and reclassifying them as unaccompanied children. ... And some of them were separated from their parents." Peter Weber

Of all the questions Beto O'Rourke and John Delaney could've gotten during Wednesday night's debates, they somehow ended up with the most pointless.

The two ex-congressmen declined to run for re-election last fall, both presumably in anticipation of their 2020 presidential runs. Yet despite the fact that O'Rourke and Delaney gave up having any say in whether Congress should open an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, they were the only candidates who were asked whether they supported the proceedings.

O'Rourke, a former representative from Texas, has pushed for impeachment time and time again over the past month, and called it "the only way to save this country" on Wednesday. Delaney, who once served in Maryland, meanwhile said he supports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) decision to wait.

Neither of their opinions will really do anything, though O'Rourke does get ... something ... for turning his impeachment answer into a brief art history lesson on this piece hanging in the Capitol building. Kathryn Krawczyk