Late night hosts delight in watching Lindsey Graham call Trump 'an enormous douche'


President Trump has "moved on to a new phase of his ever-changing defense of the indefensible, and that is: Yes, I'm being impeached, but not, like, impeached impeached," Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesdays Kimmel Live, unpersuaded. "No, it's exactly like an impeachment. ... You are about to get impeached."
But back in Congress, "once again today, Republicans lined up to win the president's love, one in particular," Kimmel said. In a Senate hearing on the Justice Department inspector general's FBI report, "Lindsey Graham put on quite a show." After role-playing "saucy text messages" between two FBI agents — including, memorably: "Wow, Donald Trump is an enormous douche" — Graham "took his performance to heights previously unseen in the Senate," Kimmel laughed. "Has anyone ever mentioned a 'golden shower' in Congress before? I don't think so." He then played not-that-old clips of Graham absolutely trashing Trump.
"I can understand why Graham is furious — not only is that overt bias by FBI agents, they're stealing Graham's best material," Stephen Colbert said at The Late Show. He also contrasted Graham's greatest hits of 2016 with his Trump sycophancy of 2019. "Will the last vertebrae to leave Lindsey Graham's spine please remember to turn off the lights?" he asked, moving on to other Republicans eager to sacrifice their reputation to Trump's defense.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"Congressional Republicans have decided that the best defense is a really loud offense," Samantha Bee said on Full Frontal. "I have a name for this strategy — it's called Kava-Noise. That's when white men who've done something awful shout into a camera at us until it goes away," and "the really disturbing thing about this strategy is that it kind of works."
The DOJ report at the center of Thursday's Senate hearing "actually exonerates the FBI of political bias," Bee said. "While there were two agents criticizing Trump via text, there were also pro-Trump agents texting their support for him. Guess which texts Lindsey Graham did a dramatic reading of?" She suggested "he's probably going to regret" this performance, savoring the "enormous douche" comment in particular: "I cannot wait to take that out of context for the next 100 years."
After hearing Graham read the text messages, "every Democrats was like, 'I allot my time to Lindsey Graham,'" Jimmy Fallon joked at The Tonight Show. He also mashed up the impeachment debate with Santa Con, the cheating New England Patriots, and KFC-scented logs. Watch below. Peter Weber
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
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.
-
June 28 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include stupid wars, a critical media, and mask standards
-
Thai fish pie with crispy turmeric potatoes recipe
The Week Recommends Tasty twist on the Lancashire hot pot is given a golden glow
-
Palestine Action: protesters or terrorists?
Talking Point Damaging RAF equipment at Brize Norton blurs line between activism and sabotage, but proscription is a drastic step
-
Canadian man dies in ICE custody
Speed Read A Canadian citizen with permanent US residency died at a federal detention center in Miami
-
GOP races to revise megabill after Senate rulings
Speed Read A Senate parliamentarian ruled that several changes to Medicaid included in Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" were not permissible
-
Supreme Court lets states ax Planned Parenthood funds
Speed Read The court ruled that Planned Parenthood cannot sue South Carolina over the state's effort to deny it funding
-
Trump plans Iran talks, insists nuke threat gone
Speed Read 'The war is done' and 'we destroyed the nuclear,' said President Trump
-
Trump embraces NATO after budget vow, charm offensive
Speed Read The president reversed course on his longstanding skepticism of the trans-Atlantic military alliance
-
Trump judge pick told DOJ to defy courts, lawyer says
Speed Read Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official nominated by Trump for a lifetime seat, stands accused of encouraging government lawyers to mislead the courts and defy judicial orders
-
Mamdani upsets Cuomo in NYC mayoral primary
Speed Read Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani beat out Andrew Cuomo in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary
-
Supreme Court clears third-country deportations
Speed Read The court allowed Trump to temporarily resume deporting migrants to countries they aren't from