Late-night TV roundup: 'Trump's not going down for his mistakes'

Extract from The Guardian

Comics, including Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee, discuss healthcare, the Rachel Maddow leak and the myth of the ‘deep state’

Trevor Noah: ‘As soon as Trump gets the vibe that this bill is making him look bad, you know he’s going to ditch it.’ Photograph: Comedy Central

Guardian staff

Friday 17 March 2017 02.33 AEDT 

Late-night hosts discussed the latest 24 hours in Donald Trump’s presidency, insisting that he was “not going down for his mistakes”.
On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah spoke about the much-criticized healthcare plan and Trump’s pre-prepared fall guy. “As soon as Trump gets the vibe that this bill is making him look bad, you know he’s going to ditch it,” he said. “He’s going to ditch it and pin it all on Paul Ryan, and watching Ryan lately, you get the sense that he knows this too.”
He played footage of Ryan claiming that Trump co-wrote the legislation but Noah retorted: “The same Donald Trump that can barely write a tweet?”

He said that when it failed, “Trump’s not going down for his mistakes. He never has.” He claimed that rather than pushing anyone under the bus, Trump was the bus and throughout his career, he had always found someone else to take the fall for his problems. “Paul Ryan, I hope you’ve got good healthcare, ’cause that bus is coming.”
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spent time ridiculing Rachel Maddow’s much-hyped reveal of Trump’s tax return. “Huge news about Donald Trump … almost happened last night,” he joked.

In reference to Trump’s tax returns, Colbert said: “The only thing he hides more fiercely is the true color of his face.”
He spoke about the overly drawn-out buildup, which the MSNBC host has been criticized about since it aired on Tuesday. “Rachel took us on an emotional rollercoaster because at the end, you’re right back where you started and feeling a little queasy,” he said.
He went on: “Is this news or a reality show? I don’t want to watch America’s Got 1040s.”
After Maddow calculated all of the various taxes Trump paid in 2005, Colbert said they added up to “zero fucks being given”.
“We know he’s rich already,” he said. “Be sure to turn into Rachel’s next special report: Wolf! Wolf! An Exclusive Look at What the Boy Cried.”
Colbert also covered the rumor that Trump might have leaked the document himself. “Although he’s better known for watching other people leaking,” he joked.
On Full Frontal, Samantha Bee discussed the “deep state”, a term that’s been thrown about a lot on Fox News.
She described Trump and his cabinet as a bunch of “state-smashing, wall-building America-first Breitbart aficionados” who were destroying the country. The deep state had become a way of explaining away any problems, as it was being used to describe Obama staffers meddling from the inside.

“The deep state is like polio,” she said. “It exists – just not in America right now.”
During a press briefing, “Sean Spicer took a break from slowly disintegrating before our eyes” to explain the sinister intentions of these workers.
“He wants us to believe that these rogue deep-state infiltrators are poison-blooded mole people and not just bland paper-pushers who lucked into a government job with benefits,” she said.
Bee rejected the claim that they were the cause of any problems.

“Think of them as passengers on a bus that’s now being driven by a feral, paranoid monkey,” she said. “They’re not trying to kick him out of the driver’s seat. They know we chose the monkey to be the bus driver because Hillary Clinton used email and was a woman, and they respect that. They’re just trying to turn the wheel slightly while the monkey is masturbating so we don’t run over a cliff.”
One of the reasons so many members of Obama’s team still work at the White House is because “Trump’s talent pool is so shallow” and he’s struggling to find people to fill roles.
“Until then, there’s nobody running the shop,” she said. “The intelligence agencies are leaking like Nana’s Depends after three pots of Sanka, and it’s driving Team Trump clinically insane.”
She referred to the leaks as “the phlegm of democracy” and said, in summary, deep state “can be whatever the person in power wants it to be”.