Late night hosts mock the 'dumb stunt' House Republicans pulled to briefly delay Trump's impeachment

Late night hosts mock House GOP

On Tuesday, House impeachment investigators got a huge piece of the puzzle tying President Trump to a quid pro quo involving withholding military aid to Ukraine for investigations of Joe Biden, and Trump's allies "jumped to his defense," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show. One of them claimed on Fox News that "abuse of power is not a crime" — Colbert said a quick Google search showed it's definitely a crime.

But mostly "the GOP's having so much trouble defending Trump's behavior that today, instead of addressing any of the charges, House Republicans stormed a closed-door hearing to protest Democrats' impeachment inquiry process," Colbert said. "It's like when you're on the debate team and the other side is really strong in the cross-examination, so for your counterpoint, you set fire to their coach."

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"Today a group of Republicans, big group of Republicans burst into a closed hearing room to stop a woman from testifying against President Trump," Conan O'Brien said at Conan. "Yeah, there was an awkward moment when the Republicans said, 'Hey, you're not Melania.'" Then Conan was stormed by a group of plausible-looking House Republicans.

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"The Republicans actually stormed the room as a Pentagon employee was moments away from testifying about Ukraine — because nothing says 'completely innocent' like storming the room of someone about to testify," Jimmy Fallon joked at The Tonight Show. "It really turned into an ugly scene among Republicans — I haven't seen that many angry white guys since NBC canceled Frasier."

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"I haven't seen a group of white guys that angry since they found out their Don Henley tickets were obstructed-view," Seth Meyers added at Late Night. "Looks like a protest outside a pharmacy that ran out of Viagra." Still, Wednesday's mob of "angry weirdos" is bad news for Trump, he said. "Republicans are flailing so badly in their attempts to actually defend what Trump did with Ukraine that rather than mount an actual defense, they've decided instead to resort to dumb stunts to shut down the inquiry altogether." Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.