Trevor Noah on Trump: 'Seriously guys, the president is a weird dude'

Extract from The Guardian

Late-night TV roundup

Late-night hosts look back on a year of immigration crises, presidential weirdness, and the demise of Donald Trump’s charity

Adrian Horton

Fri 21 Dec 2018 06.36 AEDT Last modified on Fri 21 Dec 2018 06.50 AEDT

Trevor Noah’s The Yearly Show. Photograph: YouTube

Late-night hosts examined a year of the president’s weirdness, immigration policies, and “charitable giving”.

Samantha Bee

Bee decked out her studio with an ice rink for Full Frontal’s final episode of 2018, the Christmas on Ice special, a reference the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The eight-part episode celebrated “the least terrible season of the year” with the Abolish Ice Skaters, an appearance from Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon, and a segment on location in the border town of McAllen, Texas.

“This is a tremendously difficult time to be an immigrant in America,” Bee said as she announced the episode’s fundraiser for the Kids In Need of Defense (Kind) fund, which provides legal help and social services for immigrant children in America.
On the ground in McAllen, Bee encountered (in character) Fox News journalists creeping along the Rio Grande and spoke with Elizabeth Cavazos, a volunteer with Angry Tias and Abuelas who assists asylum seekers.
“Are these people perfect?” Bee said afterward. “Probably no more than your great-great-grandad who passed you his IBS.”

When you see the faces of those processing asylum claims at the McAllen bus station, she said over pictures fading into black-and-white portraits from Ellis Island, “it’s hard not to think of immigrants a hundred years ago who were also feared and slandered, but whose descendants made America what it is today.”

Trevor Noah

The Daily Show

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Trump was weird in 2018. Let’s reflect.

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12:35 PM - Dec 20, 2018

Trevor Noah also went retrospective for The Yearly Show 2018, his final episode of the Daily Show this year due to vocal cord surgery later this week.
Noah took the long view as an opportunity to appreciate one of Donald Trump’s less-appreciated qualities: his weirdness.
“This year we spent so much time on Trump’s evilness, that we didn’t really get to enjoy one of his most important characteristics,” Noah said. “Seriously guys, the president is a weird dude.”
“2018: The Year in Trump Being Weird” highlighted some of the president’s enduring quirks: his sing-song syntax and propensity for discarding objects, such as an umbrella or microphone, on the ground.

  Donald Trump boards Air Force One with paper stuck to his shoe – video

But the number one moment of weird, Noah said, was Trump walking up Air Force One with toilet paper on his shoe.
“Do you understand how weird this is?” asked Noah, who explained the only two possible stories behind the footage. “The first way is that President Trump wiped his butt in the limo. Possible, but unlikely.”
Alternatively, the President “walked past hundreds of people – Secret Service, White House aides – and no one said anything. No one? He’s so weird that everyone saw it and they were like, ‘that’s probably his new thing?’”

Stephen Colbert

Meanwhile, over at the Late Show, Stephen Colbert processed the demise of the Trump Foundation, ordered to close down on Wednesday for its lack of charitable giving.
According to a court order, the Trump Foundation demonstrated a “pattern of illegality” while acting as Trump’s checkbook, such as a “gift” of $264,231 to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989 that was used to restore a fountain outside Trump’s Plaza Hotel.
“That’s like giving to the Red Cross but insisting it go toward a private Donald Trump emergency organ bank,” joked Colbert. “I’m kidding, of course – that’s what Eric is for.”
As part of the court deal, the Trump Foundation agreed to sell off its assets – two “hideous” portraits of Donald Trump and an autographed Denver Broncos helmet from former quarterback Tim Tebow – and donate the proceeds to charity.

“Wow! A souvenir of a famous but flawed flash in the pan, who despite being loved by evangelicals fell from grace,” Colbert remarked of the assets. “Also, Tim Tebow’s helmet.”