Late night hosts roll their eyes at the GOP's feint to cancel Coke, Mitch McConnell's corporate cash hypocrisy

GOP cola wars
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Late Show)

"I read that 40 percent of adults in the U.S. have been vaccinated, so now when you see someone without a mask it's a fun game of vaccinated or idiot?" Jimmy Fallon joked on Tuesday's Tonight Show. The Texas Rangers had 38,000 fans at their season opener, he added. "When they walked in, all the fans got a Dr. Fauci bobblehead that only shook its head no. It was a strange game, it was the first time umpires were trying to get themselves thrown out."

Meanwhile, "in response to Coca-Cola opposing Georgia's news restrictive voting law, President Trump has told his supporters to boycott the company — but check out this picture taken in his office yesterday," Fallon said. "Yeah, see it? He has a bottle of Coke on his desk. But don't worry, Trump fixed it by taking out a Sharpie and writing 'Pepsi.'"

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The Late Show offered up Shasta's cola as the laissez-faire "protest beverage of choice."

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Republicans have "dubbed Coca-Cola 'Woke-a-Cola,' and they say they'll drink Pepsi instead," Stephen Colbert said at The Late Show. "They were gonna go with RC Cola, until they discovered it stands for Radical Communism: The Flavor Belongs to the Proletariat." The Republican "leading the charge against these businesses" isn't really Trump but rather Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who "threatened punitive legislative action against the protesting corporations," Colbert said. "Yes, corporations, Mitch McConnell wants you to 'stay out of politics.' Which is why I'm sure, any day now, he's gonna return the $4.3 million he's accepted from corporations in the last five years."

McConnell later clarified he's "not talking about political contributions." But "cash isn't the only way McConnell's being a hypocrite here," Colbert said, playing a 2013 clip of McConnell saying "every corporation in America should be free to participate in the political process." "I'd call that a self-own," he said, "but he's already 100 percent owned by corporations."

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"Our former president popped up on Newsmax today, where he encouraged his MAGA-heads to boycott baseball and warned against woke-ness," said Jimmy Kimmel, who pointed out Trump's hidden Coke bottle on Monday's Kimmel Live. "This is the move: Now that things are going well, they can't possibly credit Joe Biden for turning the country around, so Trump and Co. like to say someone else must be running the country." You can watch that, plus a new Ken Burns mockumentary, below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

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.