Late Night Tackles Trump and impeachment
Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah dump on Dershowitz's dangerous Trump-can-do-anything defense
President Trump's impeachment trial has moved into two days of question time, Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's Daily Show. He explained the process and groaned: "No wonder this thing takes 16 hours. The Senate is communicating though note-passing like they're back in middle school." To "make it fun," he proposed, Chief Justice John Roberts should impersonate the senator whose question he's reading.
"For most of the day, senators asked questions to their own side that gave them another chance to repeat their talking points," Noah said. "But there was one moment — one moment — from the trial that caught everyone's attention, and it came from Trump's attorney Alan Dershowitz." He played Dershowitz's defense, then summarized it: "So just to be clear, the Trump team's argument is now that anything Trump does to get himself re-elected is fine, because his re-election, in his mind, is good for the country, and then it's not impeachable. Anything. ... This whole idea, it seems more like a monarchy or something," Noah added, and then he was handed a note with a "question for Alan Dershowitz. It says: 'Get the f--k outta here!'"
Dershowitz was definitely the star of Wednesday's Q&A session, Stephen Colbert said at The Late Show, jumping from Dershowitz's early "Freudian defense" of Trump to his circular "the only way that it could be illegal is if it's illegal" rationalization, and he lingered on Dershowitz's "crazy, corrupt argument" that "if a politician believes their re-election is 'in the public interest,' and he just said all politicians believe that, it naturally follows that anything they do to get re-elected is fine."
"No, it's not!" Colbert said. "Only the public gets to decide what's in the public interest, not the politicians! It's We the People, not You the Douchebag. That's why on Election Day you don't see a politician wearing a sticker that says: 'You voted. Trust me.'" Colbert had one final question about Dershowitz's "blueprint for a banana republic": "What sort of inspirational posters are hanging in Dershowitz's office? 'Confidence: When you believe you can fly, you're always above the law.'" Watch below. Peter Weber