Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Trevor Noah see guilt, grift, acceptance in Trump's coming pardons

"Yesterday it came out that President Trump might give Rudy Giuliani a pre-emptive pardon — well now he's thinking about the same thing for his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his kids Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr.," Jimmy Fallon said on Wednesday's Tonight Show. "It's not a great look for your presidency when your biggest accomplishment is 'most family members pardoned.' It's pretty crazy. The last person who needed pardons for their whole family was Charles Manson."

Meanwhile, "Tiffany Trump is somewhere, like, 'Hello! I can commit crimes, too. Stop ignoring me, Dad,'" James Corden joked at The Late Late Show. "To be fair, Don Jr. says he doesn't need a pardon — unless cocaine is illegal."

"Usually presidents grant pardons after they've been vetted very carefully by the Justice Department," Jimmy Kimmel said at Kimmel Live. "Trump is shooting them out of a T-shirt cannon right now." Still, "Trump has a real opportunity here," he added. "He could pardon Joe Exotic, Rudy Giuliani, Jared from Subway, Suge Knight, Aunt Becky, put them all in a house, and boom! Donald Trump's Celebrity A-penitentiary, this summer on ABC."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

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.

Sign up

Seriously, "Tiger King" Joe Exotic thinks he has a real shot at a lame-duck pardon from Trump, Stephen Colbert noted at The Late Show. "Oh come on! A ridiculous, washed-up, paranoid, obviously guilty reality star might pardon Joe Exotic?" Trump won't admit he lost, but the pardon talk gives the game away. It's not clear what crimes Trump thinks his kids might have committed, but "a pre-emptive blanket pardon for everything you might have done seems a little excessive," he said. "Crime-ing is like drinking: It's a red flag if you don't know exactly how many drinks you've had or how many crimes you've done."

"Trump is just handing out pardons like they're gift cards: 'I figured I'd let you pick your own crimes. So enjoy!'" Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. In fact, "it turns out anyone may be able to get a pardon from Trump — for the right price." Trump isn't publicly implicated in a newly revealed "bribery-for-pardon" scheme, he noted, but "after knowing him for this long, I think we can assume that my man is not going to turn down some pardon cash. If anything, I think we should be impressed that he hasn't started targeting Instagram ads to former felons." Watch below. Peter Weber