Late night hosts are underwhelmed by Trump's police reforms, bullish on Bolton's bombshells


Protesters have been demanding police reforms for weeks, and "today the president himself carefully shuffled down the ramp into the fray," Trevor Noah said on Tuesday's Daily Show. It was all "a little confusing, because he signed an executive order that would make modest changes," but "he spent the whole time praising the police," he said. "The only paper Trump has signed with less enthusiasm were his first two marriage certificates."
Yes, "Trump signed an executive order on police reform," Stephen Colbert said at The Late Show, but "before you get excited, don't — it doesn't do much," other than proposing "an Excel spreadsheet of all the worst cops in America," a chokehold "ban" with a huge loophole, and sundry other tweaks. "This event was supposedly about police reform, but Trump made it clear that he doesn't think it's that necessary," he said, and "he closed by making it creepy."
Colbert turned to former National Security Adviser John Bolton's upcoming book, the latest "damning White House tell-all written by a former White House staffer way too late for it to make any difference." Still, Bolton's book "must be extra spicy," because the Justice Department just filed a breach-of-contract suit against him, he said, shrugging. The lawsuit bizarrely claims Bolton broke a nondisclosure agreement, but "Trump should just cut Bolton a check for $130,000," he joked, making a Stormy Daniels reference.
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Tooning Out the News thanked Trump for all the great free publicity on behalf of Bolton's mustache.
Bolton's "the guy who offered to testify during the impeachment trial, but the Republicans said nah, no thanks, we're good," Jimmy Kimmel recalled. At this point, he added, impeachment "feels like a Hulu show I was really into and then hated the ending of. But Bolton is back," and Trump is warning he'll have "criminal problems" because every conversation Trump has is "highly classified." "Those are rules for a bachelor party, not the law," Kimmel said. "He just makes things up as he goes."
Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson is "literally putting a Band-Aid on the problem of racism," and Fox News appears to be "disappointed that there's no looting going on anymore," because they're now "manufacturing outrage in response to a nonexistent movement to cancel the show Paw Patrol," Kimmel sighed. "There's real stuff to be mad about, you know."
Late Night's Seth Meyers told jokes about some of them. Watch below. Peter Weber
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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.
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