Late-night TV roasts Trump on climate: he 'surrendered Florida to the ocean'

Extract from The Guardian

Comics including Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers discussed the executive order rolling black environmental protection and further Russian connections

‘Clean coal sounds like an oxymoron but then so does president Trump,’ Stephen Colbert says. Photograph: YouTube

Guardian staff

Thursday 30 March 2017 02.42 AEDT 

Late-night hosts on Tuesday decided to focus on Trump’s latest decision to remove many of Obama’s environmental regulations and further revelations about possible Russian connections.

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert spoke about the most recent executive order. “A lot of people are upset with Donald Trump because he’s not keeping all of his campaign promises,” he said. “He didn’t repeal Obamacare last week so today he kept an important campaign promise, one that he said many times: today he repealed the environment.”

He claimed that the decision means that he’s “just surrendered Florida to the ocean”.
The White House has claimed that it will create many new jobs. “Repealing environmental regulations will create all sorts of new jobs: oil refining, fracking, clean water historian, keeper of the last six bees ...” Colbert joked.
He then played footage of Trump bragging about the clean coal that will now be created. “Clean coal sounds like an oxymoron but then so does President Trump,” he said.

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host started with the news that Jared Kushner is the latest of Trump’s cabinet to be linked with Russia. “At this point it would just be easier to talk about people at the White House who didn’t meet with shady Russians,” he said.

Trump’s response to the latest allegations was to tweet that Clinton’s links with Russia should be focused on instead. “You know why congress isn’t looking into Hillary Clinton?” he said. “Because every day you’re presenting them with a thousand bigger problems. If Godzilla is rampaging in the streets, it’s not the best time to say ‘we need to fix these potholes’.”
He then talked about Devin Nunes, chairman of the house intelligence committee. “Nunes looks like every guy you don’t remember meeting,” he joked.

Meyers listed the strange story surrounding Nunes, who disappeared for a short amount of time right before delivering suspect information to the president. He pitched a film version: “Steve Carell stars as a bumbling congressman turned spy in the new comedy High Nunes”.
He then made a link between Trump and Jeff Bridges’ character in The Big Lebowski. “The Dude and Trump have a lot in common,” he said. “They both have bathrobes, both obsessed with their rugs and they both love White Russians”
During a press conference. Sean Spicer’s response to a question about Russia was to blame the press for making links that aren’t there. He claimed that if Trump used Russian dressing on a salad, people would see it as a connection. “The most suspicious thing about that scenario is the idea that Trump would eat a salad,” he said.

On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon addressed Trump’s low approval rating, a new record that’s worse than anything ever recorded by either Clinton or Obama. “After hearing this, Trump promised to hunt down Bin Laden and sleep with an intern,” he said.
He also discussed the connection that’s been unearthed between Jared Kushner and Russia. “When he heard his son-in-law was having meetings with shady Russians, Trump said ‘You can start calling me dad’,” he said.
Footage from the most recent White House presser showed that Sean Spicer appeared to have some food stuck in his teeth. “Spicer had so much food in his mouth, he barely had room for his foot,” he said.

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah introduced a skit. “If Trump only wants to spend time on the military then maybe we just have to make everything military,” he said.
He joked that Meals on Wheels, which would be eliminated as part of Trump’s latest budget proposal, should be militarized with “meal team six” throwing meals through windows.
During the skit, a member of the team says: “If we look and act like the military when we deliver food, we can trick the president and protect meals on wheels.”