Extract from The Guardian

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Late-night TV roundup

Late-night hosts on Trump's reason for firing Comey: 'It rhymes with Russia'

Comics, including Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee, discussed the fallout from the president’s decision to get rid of the FBI director

‘Democracies don’t go away in a flash. People need to get that into their minds’ ... Trevor Noah. Photograph: YouTube

Guardian staff

Friday 12 May 2017 01.27 AEST 

Late-night hosts continued to challenge Donald Trump’s decision to fire the FBI director, James Comey, remarking on the ramifications it has for US democracy.
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert remained surprised at the president’s transparency. “We’ve apparently elected a president who truly does not care what anything looks like, which is surprising for a guy whose actual face we’ve never seen,” he said.

He said the move “feels like authoritarianism 101” and said that any theories of nefarious motivations were probably spot-on.

“One thing we’ve learned from the last two years of Donald Trump is that what he seems like he’s doing, he’s actually doing,” he said. “There’s no grand strategy.”
Colbert ridiculed the reasoning behind the decision, which led him to joke: “The Department of Justice is now the Department of Justification.”

Trump has tweeted that once things have calmed down, people will be thanking him for making this decision. “We should get him something special,” he said. “How about a special prosecutor?”
In an attempt to calm the situation, Trump “rehydrated Kellyanne Conway”, who appeared on CNN defending the decision, which led to Anderson Cooper rolling his eyes. Colbert noted that he “couldn’t possibly show more contempt than that”.
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah said he believed that since Comey was partly responsible for getting Trump elected, thanks to his Clinton comments, his firing was yet another sign that Trump is unhappy in his new position. “Trump doesn’t want to be president. This is his revenge,” he said.

He went on: “I’m not going to sugarcoat this. This is bad for democracy.” He then spoke about the assertion that Comey was fired because of how he handled the Clinton email situation.
“That would be like returning a Fleshlight because your orgasms were too powerful,” Noah joked before referring to the excuse as “straight-up bullshit”.

He continued: “You don’t need to be a genius to figure out why Trump really canned Comey. It rhymes with Russia.”
Comey was fired days after he asked for more funding and personnel to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. “That’s like breaking up with your girlfriend right after she asks if she can look at your phone,” he said.
He ended by warning viewers that this was yet another step towards a worrying future. “Democracies don’t go away in a flash,” he said. “People need to get that into their minds.”

On Full Frontal, Samantha Bee played footage of Vladimir Putin’s response to the Comey news, saying that Trump was just acting in accordance with his competence. “We know!” she said. “That’s the problem. His only competence is firing people.”
Bee acknowledged that Comey wasn’t someone who anyone liked, but his unbiased position was an important one. “Comey’s a bit of a turd, but at least he’s an independent turd,” she said.
Whoever ends up as his successor would be aware of one very clear fact, she said. “They know that if they look too hard at Trump’s Russia connections, they’ll be out,” she said.
She continued: “This has become normal. This president has wiped his ass with the constitution so many times the national archives started leaving passive-aggressive notes asking him to chip in for toilet paper.”

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host spoke about how Comey was officially fired via a letter delivered by Trump’s personal bodyguard. “On The Apprentice, at least Donald Trump had the decency to fire people to their face using his now famous catchphrase: ‘There were 1.5 million people at my inauguration.’
“That’s even worse than breaking up with a girl by text. That’s like breaking up with a girl in the chat feature on Words with Friends.”

On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host spoke about a troubling comparison. “You know, when we said Trump should act more presidential, we probably should have specified: we didn’t mean Nixon,” he said.
He also spoke about Comey’s reported belief that news of his firing on TV was a prank. “Donald Trump has only pulled one prank, and it was getting elected president by selling the most hats,” he said.
To avoid answering questions from the press, Sean Spicer hid in bushes. “Sean Spicer is about two weeks away from throwing down a smoke bomb and disappearing like Batman,” he joked.