\n<\/p>\n
Late-night hosts rebuke Paramount\u2019s settlement with Donald Trump and mock the Maga movement infighting over the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n
Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show on Monday after two weeks in Turkey \u2013 \u201cI heard so many great things from Mayor Adams about it,\u201d he quipped \u2013 to blast his network\u2019s parent company, Paramount, for settling with Donald Trump for $16m. \u201cAs someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I\u2019d say $16m would help.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The settlement ended a \u201cnuisance lawsuit\u201d filed by Trump, claiming that CBS News deceptively edited their interview with then presidential candidate Kamala Harris last fall. \u201cParamount knows they could have fought it,\u201d Colbert explained, because the company itself called the lawsuit \u201ccompletely without merit\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd keep in mind, Paramount produced Transformers: Rise of the Beast \u2013 they know completely without merit,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n
The settlement did not include an apology, though Colbert didn\u2019t equate that with defiance. He imagined a statement for them: \u201cYou may take our money, but you will never take our dignity. You may, however, purchase our dignity for the low, low price of $16m. We need the cash.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given that Paramount\u2019s owners are pushing the Trump administration to approve the sale of CBS to Skydance, it\u2019s a settlement by one name or, as Colbert put it, \u201ca big fat bribe\u201d by another.<\/p>\n
Colbert then turned his attention to infighting in the Trump administration, after the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, released a statement that the Department of Justice and the FBI found \u201cno incriminating client list\u201d of financier Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s nor \u201ccredible evidence \u2026 that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals\u201d, thus contradicting Maga conspiracists.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t take this away from your base! That is Maga\u2019s favorite conspiracy!\u201d Colbert laughed. \u201cWhat are we going to find out next? That immigrants aren\u2019t eating cats? That if you sail to the horizon, you don\u2019t fall off the world?\u201d<\/p>\n
In a long screed on Truth Social, Trump decried the \u201cselfish people\u201d who were \u201ctrying to hurt [Maga], all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait, wait?! Maga, you heard your leader \u2013 Jeffrey Epstein is alive!\u201d Colbert joked. \u201cThat can mean only one thing: zombie Epstein. He\u2019s coming for our brains, and thank goodness, because I do not want to think of him any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaga-world, for the first time in memory, isn\u2019t just slavishly acquiescing to Trump\u2019s reality distortion field,\u201d said Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, referring to the backlash against Trump by his own base over the Epstein files his administration now claims don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are all people who work for Trump that set the expectation,\u201d Stewart explained. \u201cIn a few months\u2019 time, we went from \u2018the Epstein files will expose the Democrats\u2019 to \u2018the Epstein files were written by the Democrats and therefore can\u2019t be trusted, so let\u2019s move on\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart showed videos of Trump supporters booing the news that the Epstein files allegedly do not exist, or burning their Maga hats.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaga world is now in open revolt,\u201d Stewart relished. \u201cClearly telling your base to just forget about Epstein isn\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaga is losing their shit right now,\u201d he added. \u201cThey cannot believe what they\u2019re seeing. Trump is lying? Dismissing reasonable concerns as bad-faith whining? Attacking anyone who disagrees?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a resident of blue America, can I just say right now to my red colleagues that my pronouns are \u2018how does\u2019 and \u2018my ass taste\u2019,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe Trump that you\u2019re just experiencing now, to your deep disappointment and dismay, is the dude we\u2019ve been dealing with the whole fucking time. You just didn\u2019t realize it because he\u2019s been nice to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also mocked the Maga infighting over Epstein, which is \u201ca monster of their own making\u201d, he said. \u201cThey made the Epstein conspiracy the center of their worldview, despite the fact that Trump and Epstein were photographed together and partied together, and Trump called Epstein a \u2018terrific guy\u2019 and Epstein called Trump his \u201cclosest friend for 10 years\u2019. Maga ignored all that, and hyper-fixated on the Epstein story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meyers played clips of prominent Trump supporters including JD Vance, conspiracy podcast host turned deputy FBI director Dan Bongino and even Donald Trump Jr calling for the release of the so-called \u201cEpstein tapes\u201d.<\/p>\n
And yet the Department of Justice no claims there is no list, which directly contradicts what Bondi said in an interview with Fox News in February: that the list was \u201csitting on my desk right now to review\u201d. Bondi now claims that it was merely the file on her desk, which did not contain a list. \u201cAre we really going to believe that anyone in the world would have the Epstein file on their desk and not immediately take a peek?\u201d Meyers wondered. \u201cI mean, who has that kind of restraint?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaga accomplished nothing, because they believe in nothing,\u201d he concluded of the mess. \u201cThe only two things that held them together were a cult-like devotion to Trump and their conspiracy theories. And now that those are butting up against each other, they\u2019re imploding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Late-night hosts rebuke Paramount\u2019s settlement with Donald Trump and mock the Maga movement infighting over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Stephen Colbert Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show on Monday after two weeks in Turkey \u2013 \u201cI heard so many great things from Mayor Adams about it,\u201d he quipped \u2013 to blast his network\u2019s parent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[4265,1285,4267,4263,4266,447,4264,448,2823,2039,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-11052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-16m","9":"tag-big","10":"tag-bribe","11":"tag-colbert","12":"tag-fat","13":"tag-latenight","14":"tag-paramounts","15":"tag-roundup","16":"tag-settlement","17":"tag-stephen","18":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}