Late-night TV on Trump's Puerto Rico visit: 'A hurricane is not a golf game'

Extract from The Guardian

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Late-night TV roundup

Comics, including Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah, discussed the Trump-Tillerson tensions, Hurricane Maria relief and fake news

Samantha Bee on Donald Trump’s visit: ‘The devastated island of Puerto Rico was hit by a category 5 tsunami of self-congratulation.’ Photograph: TBS

Jake Nevins

Friday 6 October 2017 02.14 AEDT Last modified on Friday 6 October 2017 03.55 AEDT

Late-night hosts on Wednesday addressed secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s press conference, in which he sidestepped reports that he called Donald Trump a “moron”, and also the relief efforts in Puerto Rico, which was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

“I have some shocking news,” Stephen Colbert began. “There’s chaos in the White House. It all started this morning when NBC News reported that over the summer, secretary of state and spokesmodel of Just For Eyebrows Rex Tillerson openly disparaged Trump by referring to him as a moron after a meeting at the Pentagon.
“Why would Tillerson say such a vicious, accurate thing about his boss?” Colbert asked. “Well, apparently tensions came to a head around the time Trump delivered a politicized speech to the Boy Scouts, an organization Tillerson once led.”
“That’s what made him mad?” Colbert went on. “Saying there are ‘fine people’ at a Nazi rally? Giving golf trophies to hurricane victims? But the jamboree is sacred.”

Colbert shared Trump’s response, on Twitter, to the NBC report, which alleged that Tillerson threatened to resign. Trump’s tweet read: “NBC news is #FakeNews and more dishonest than even CNN. They are a disgrace to good reporting. No wonder their news ratings are way down!”

“Hours later, Tillerson mysteriously, totally unrelated to Donald Trump, decided to hold an impromptu press conference,” Colbert explained. “He began by declaring his love for his job. Then Tillerson went on to repeat the story. As for his opinion of Donald Trump, Tillerson made that clear.”
Colbert then showed footage from Tillerson’s press conference, where he called Trump “smart”, said he “loves his country” and added that he “holds those around him accountable for whether they’ve done the job he’s asked them to do”.
“For instance, he makes them hold uncomfortable press conferences after he finds out they’ve called him a moron,” Colbert joked. “Rex Tillerson stood in front of the nation and vouched for Donald Trump’s intelligence, which means he categorically denies the moron thing, right?”
Colbert then showed Tillerson’s response to a pointed question about the veracity of the report he called Trump a moron. Tillerson replied: “I’m not going to deal with petty stuff like that.”
“Yeah, he totally said it,” Colbert concluded.
Samantha Bee of TBS offered her commentary regarding the administration’s relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the island’s long history of manipulation by the United States.
“Yesterday, the devastated island of Puerto Rico was hit by a category 5 tsunami of self-congratulation,” Bee began, showing Trump’s cavalier comments about how Puerto Rico’s death toll did not match that of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
“The lowest score doesn’t win, doofus! A hurricane is not a golf game or an election,” Bee quipped. “If you’re shocked by this, then you are not Puerto Rican. Truth is, we’ve been treating them like the unwelcome nephew under America’s stairs for more than a century.”
“The average income of Puerto Ricans is $15,000, less than half of Mississippi,” Bee continued. “Meanwhile, food in Puerto Rico costs twice as much as it does in Florida because of an obscure little shakedown known as the Jones Act, which is as unfamiliar to most Americans as it clearly is to my graphics department.”

The Jones Act, the host explained, requires all trade between US ports to be done on US merchant ships built in the United States and manned by American sailors.“Here’s another thing that’s not Trump’s fault: Operation Bootstrap, a tax haven scheme that started back when Donald was one year old,” Bee said, noting that Operation Bootstrap gave tax advantages to companies located in Puerto Rico. “And Puerto Rican dollars flooded back into the United States to businesses that had no stake in the island’s long-term success. So when Bill Clinton cheated those companies out of those tax breaks, they did what any self-respecting partner would do: they packed their bags and walked out the goddamn door, leaving the Puerto Rican economy to be solely based on sexy barbers and dancing in the street.”“Soon after the manufacturing exodus, the global economy imploded – also our fault – and Puerto Rico’s economy has never recovered,” Bee went on. “And right now, half the population still doesn’t have drinking water to soak up with all those free paper towels Potus chucked at them before declaring mission accomplished.”Trevor Noah of Comedy Central turned his eye toward the fake news phenomenon.“Fake news online is a major problem, especially considering that two-thirds of adults in America said they get some of their news from social media and the other third said they get it from Steve Harvey, so it’s bad all around,” Noah began.Noah showed news reports detailing the disinformation that spread after Sunday night’s shooting in Las Vegas: “After Vegas, Facebook and Google news were filled with fake news about multiple shooters, fictional victims, Isis involvement, my sex tape, all fake things, very fake things.”“The fake news about Vegas is not an isolated incident,” the host continued. “This is turning out to be a problem across all social media. So Facebook has fake news, Google has fake news, Twitter has fake news. Who would’ve thought we’d be living in a world where Snapchat is our only legitimate source of news?”“It would already be bad if all the fake news coming from the inside of the White House was the only thing we had to deal with, but as we’ve learned the Russians are also involved,” Noah said, noting that congressional and special counsel investigations into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia have unearthed comprehensive Russian efforts to spread fake news, as 10 million Americans saw Russian-linked ads, many of which specifically targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, during the election.“Even the Russians knew they had to campaign in Wisconsin,” Noah joked.