Late night hosts preview Trump's final pardon spree, other elements of his last day as president

"Well guys there's only 36 hours left in Trump's presidency," Jimmy Fallon said on Monday's Tonight Show. Still, "with Trump, 36 hours still seems like a long time, right? It's like if someone said, 'You're only going to be on fire for 36 more hours,'" he joked. "Normally after a president's term they show before-and-after photos to prove how much the job aged him. This time they're showing before-and-after photos of all of us."

"During his last hours in office, Trump is planning to issue pardons but, it's reported, not going to give pardons to himself or his family members," Fallon said. "Trump is the only president in history who decides not to pardon himself and you immediately think, 'What's he up to?'"

More footage has come out showing what happened inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 siege, "and it's a lot worse than a lot of people guessed," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "Fortunately, these geniuses taped it all for us, they documented their crimes for the FBI to see." He ran through some of the day's terrible ironies, adding, "Hopefully tomorrow we'll begin the process of turning these real-life events back into headlines from The Onion, where they belong."

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

"Trump has the lowest average approval rating of any president in the modern era," Kimmel said. "The only one to leave office with a lower rating than that was Kevin Spacey. But fortunately, Trump isn't the type who cares about silly things like approval and ratings." Seriously, "maybe Donald Trump's biggliest accomplishment over the past four years is he did so much crazy stuff, we forgot about how ridiculous his hair looks," he added. "Tomorrow, Trump is expected to issue about 100 pardons," and "pardons are a weird thing to put a criminal in charge of, but ever the showman, not only is Trump doing these up big, he's turned it into a made-for-TV event."

"By my watch, 48 hours left in Trump's presidency," and his last-ditch "100 pardons and commutations" are apparently "just for starters," Conan O'Brien said on Conan, teeing up his own video of Trump's "Pardonpallooza" spree.

Yes, "Trump is reportedly planning to issue at least 100 pardons and commutations," Seth Meyers said at Late Night. "He said he wanted to give so many so that it would be even more hilarious when [Rudy] Giuliani doesn't get one." Watch below. Peter Weber