Late-night TV on the Comey-Trump dinner: 'This sounds like a terrible Tinder date'

Extract from The Guardian

Late-night TV roundup

Comics, including Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Samantha Bee, addressed former FBI director James Comey’s memo and Eric Trump’s charity

Seth Meyers: ‘Maybe the craziest part is the the absurd lengths Trump went to to try to get Comey to pledge his loyalty by essentially playing word games with him.’ Photograph: NBC

Jake Nevins

Friday 9 June 2017 03.26 AEST Last modified on Friday 9 June 2017 03.47 AEST

Late-night hosts discussed the contents of James Comey’s pre-written remarks, released Wednesday afternoon, before his testimony at a Senate hearing on Thursday.
The seven-page letter details his conversations with Donald Trump, while lending credence to the notion that Trump, on multiple occasions, attempted to get Comey to shut down the FBI’s counter-intelligence investigation into potential Trump campaign dealings with Russia.
“The entire political world is awaiting the former FBI director James Comey’s testimony tomorrow,” Seth Meyers began. “But today, his opening statement was published, and it provides some damning new information about Comey’s interactions with the president.”

Meyers said: “First of all, just the sheer number of conversations Comey had with Trump is itself weird. He says that he had a total on nine one-on-one conversation with Trump. To put that in perspective, he’s only talked to Eric Trump five times ever.”
Meyers went on to discuss Comey’s account of his dinner with the president, in which the latter apparently asked for a pledge of loyalty, to which Comey replied he would give him “honesty”.

“Even in conversations Trump is a terrible deal-maker,” Meyers joked, impersonating the back-and-forth between Comey and the president. “I need loyalty. You can have honesty. Honest loyalty? Sure.”

Stephen Colbert of The Late Show was also anticipating Comey’s testimony. “Man, there’s so much to talk about tonight I’m going to do two monologues,” he joked. “It’s the most magical night of the year because it’s Comey Testimony Eve.
“People are calling Comey’s testimony Washington’s Super Bowl. And today, we got the pre-splosion. Because at Comey’s insistence, the Senate published his pre-written opening remarks this afternoon.”

“Comey described a dinner he had with Trump after the inauguration,” said Colbert, referring to the section of Comey’s remarks that summarized his dinner with the president on January 27. “When he was invited, Comey assumed other people would be attending, of course, but when he showed up it turned out to be just the two of them seated at a small oval table.
“Oh, come on,” Colbert quipped. “That’s the oldest trick in the book. You invite your FBI director over for a movie saying it’s going to be a group thing, just the two of you. Can’t make Netflix work, so you know, you obstruct justice.”
Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah focused on some of the other controversies weighing on the Trump administration, including the president’s response to last week’s terrorist attacks in London and allegations that money from Eric Trump’s charity were channelled into his father’s businesses.
“After this weekend’s terrorist attack in London,” Bee began, “our president responded on Twitter. Unfortunately, this time, he didn’t fall asleep mid-covfefe.”

She continued: “What is wrong with you? Were you just fulfilling your annual Ramadan tradition of hurling insults at grief-stricken Muslims named Khan? I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK asked to take a break from our special relationship and start seeing other countries.”

Trevor Noah began his segment making reference to Comey’s forthcoming testimony, adding, “on top of all of that, his [Trump’s] third favorite son, Eric, is in hot water of his own.
“Forbes Magazine published an article exposing where some of the money that Eric Trump raised for charity was actually going,” Noah said, before airing news reels detailing the Forbes report, which alleged, among others things, that the “Donald J Trump Foundation … used the Eric Trump Foundation to funnel $100,000 in donations into revenue for the Trump Organization.”
“Wow,” Noah said. “So, when I first read that story I thought, this guy’s such a dirtbag. But thats not entirely fair, honestly, because Eric Trump did raise millions of dollars for the St Jude children’s hospital. In fact, they even put his name on the hospital wing. Not a picture, just his name, all right? Those poor kids have been through enough.

“And this brings us to how Eric went from using his incredible privilege to help the less fortunate to being the guy skimming from charities. And it turns out he fell in with a bad crowd,” Noah explained, referring, of course, to Eric’s father, who reportedly forced his son’s charity to pay the Trump Organization for the usage of golf courses.
“That is heartless, and also the theme of Trump’s new healthcare plan,” Noah joked. “So, I guess at the end of the day we’re starting to understand that this is the curse of being one of Donald Trump’s children. You can try and be good, but he’ll be like, ‘no, no, no, don’t do that. You’re a Trump.’”