On the eve of the US midterm elections, late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump’s lack of focus on the campaigns, a scandal in the Alaska Senate race and Haley Stevens’s about-face in Michigan.
Jon Stewart
With only one day to go until the midterms, “it’s closing arguments time,” said Jon Stewart on Monday evening, “and today, the president took to the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to make his final case to the voters.”
But instead of talking about the election, Trump instead droned on about his reflecting pool renovations, bragging about “this massive piece of pool”.
“That was the president of the United States, on the day before the midterms, choosing to make a speech at the reflecting pool to talk about the reflecting pool,” the Daily Show host marveled. “No symbolism, no metaphors, just straight-up pool maintenance. That was Donald Trump’s ‘I had it cleaned’ speech, if you will.”
But while Trump’s priorities were, as Stewart put it, “badly misplaced”, Democrats “appear in position for a wave election” in the House and Senate “as long as the remaining couple of days before the election are bombshell-less, drama-free, non-earthquakey”.
And then there’s Michigan, where the Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens switched her endorsement at the 11th hour away from the progressive who defeated her in the primary, Abdul El-Sayed, to the Republican Mike Rogers. “We all knew there was drama in Michigan when Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed defeated Haley Stevens in a contentious primary for the Democratic nomination, but Stevens has always been very clear as to their shared goal of defeating Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers,” said Stewart before several clips of Stevens criticizing Rogers as a “nightmare” Trump Republican who would not stand for Michigan voters.
And yet on Sunday, Stevens posted a video endorsing Rogers seemingly filmed in her car.
“Is her car in a ditch? Is she endorsing Mike Rogers after getting in a car accident?” Stewart wondered. “Real quick, before I lose consciousness, I am endorsing the nightmare.’
“What the fuck happened?” he added. “This is like the most diabolical episode of Fargo I’ve ever seen.
“What could have driven Haley Stevens into the arms of the Rogers campaign?” he asked, before a clip of Stevens alongside Rogers, complaining that she was not invited to any of El-Sayed’s campaign events.
“That says why you’re mad at Abdul. But not why you’re for Rogers,” Stewart said. “Rogers is, hold on, let me find the word, a nightmare, who is against every principle you’ve worked for your entire career.
“I mean, at least say you were visited by three ghosts who convinced you that it turns out people don’t need health insurance,” he added. “This can’t really be about getting your feelings hurt.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“More than 57 million Americans have already cast their ballots,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening. And “Trump made his closing arguments. He chose to do that in front of his ill-fated reflecting pool. What better way to reassure the public that they are in good hands than in front of a pool you’ve repeatedly botched to the tune of $16m?
“Donald Trump, the man who famously promised to ‘drain the swamp’, made his last stand at the site of his own man-made swamp, standing victoriously in front of this hard-won pond like the soldiers who triumphed at Iwo Jima,” he joked.
The president spoke beside the pool for over an hour, and “many are calling it his Pettysburg address,” Kimmel quipped. “He blamed Joe Biden and Obama for everything that happened to the pool before he was there. He said he’s giving serious thought to renaming the pool after himself – which, that’s a nice idea. He ranted about bermuda grass and topsoil and his construction projects and the ballroom, James Comey, rusty pipes. He had visual aids. And then he stripped down to his diapers and did a pretty impressive cannonball into the shallow end of the thing.
“Somehow, the ‘Energizer Dummy’ managed to blabber his way through 30 rallies over the past 32 days,” he added. “And with the campaign for control of Congress at the 2-yard line, Trump is laser-focused on the issues that matter most.”
Seth Meyers
In the final stretch until the midterms, “Trump isn’t really hitting the campaign trail,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “He’s just kinda falling on it with a big ol’ splat, like a birthday cake hitting the pavement facedown.
“Execution isn’t what he and his buddies are worried about,” he continued. “Don’t focus on the insane things he’s saying. Focus on how hard he’s working and how little he’s sleeping.”
According to Trump, “no president has ever worked so hard on a midterm”, as he’s “working like a dog”.
And yet the president canceled several campaign rallies that were supposed to be held this weekend in Kansas and Iowa. “The dude’s done 30 rallies in less than two months, and suddenly he’s canceling during the final climactic weekend?” Meyers laughed. “That’s like sprinting the first 26 miles of the New York City marathon and then calling an Uber for the last thousand feet.”
Meyers then switched tack to a bombshell New York Times report from the Alaska Senate race. According to the investigation, Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign helped recruit an independent candidate named Dan Sullivan as a spoiler in her race against a different Dan Sullivan.
“Wow, I am shocked. It pains me to say this, but I have to call balls and strikes: this is very fucking funny,” said Meyers. “I mean, fuckin’ A, they finally did it: the Democrats finally did something as dirty as the Republicans.
“I mean, it’s not systematically lobbying state election officials to send alternate slates of electors to Congress as part of an illegal scheme to undermine a presidential election and then storming the Capitol, shitting in the rotunda and threatening to kill Mike Pence dirty, but it’s still pretty dirty,” he added.
“Both parties do stuff like this,” Meyers noted. “The difference is, this time, the Democrats were actually good at it.”
