Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘Continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet’
Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s nomination of Dr Mehmet Oz to his administration, and the ongoing scandals around his attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz.Donald Trump “is continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet”, said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show.On Tuesday, Trump announced the pseudoscience advocate and former TV host Mehmet Oz as the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid.“OK so he’s still just picking people he sees on TV,” said Colbert.“Next up, the head of Amtrak goes to Thomas the Tank Engine.
”In his announcement, Trump noted that Oz won nine daytime Emmy awards for hosting The Dr Oz Show,“I didn’t know winning TV awards qualifies you to administer our medical system,” Colbert noted,“I’ve never heard anyone yell, ‘This man is having a heart attack! Quick, does anyone here have an outstanding achievement in formative daytime talk?’”If Oz is confirmed, he would oversee Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Obamacare marketplace exchange Healthcare,gov, “which under Dr Oz will be replaced with 10tipstoblastbellyfat,biz”, Colbert quipped.
Oz, Colbert reminded his audience, spent years on TV “peddling quack medical treatments”, including the debunked cure-all colloidal silver, which if taken in high qualities can cause a permanent bluish-gray discoloration of the skin.“So seniors, you may lose your Medicare, but maybe your grandkids will want to visit Nana Smurf,” Colbert joked.Along with Oz, Trump has also nominated the television hosts Sean Duffy for secretary of transportation and Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense.As Colbert observed: “Everyone with a TV show gets a call! Where’s my job offer?”Colbert proposed a deal to Trump: “I will stop talking about you altogether if I get an ambassadorship.But I mean a good one.
” As in, “any country that is mentioned in the song Kokomo”,On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host lamented unfinished justice for Trump,“Four indictments, 34 felonies, an insurrection, the fake electors, the ‘find me 11,000 votes call’, the classified documents in the men’s room – he got away with all of it,It’s like Shawshank without the redemption,“For a criminal mastermind who weaponized the justice department against Donald Trump, Joe Biden really dropped the ball on this one,” he added.
“It’s like nothing ever happened at all,”Even worse, Trump is now receiving intelligence briefings again,“So if you’re staying at Mar-a-Lago and you’re wondering why the toilets are all clogged – that’s why,” Kimmel quipped,“America is once again sharing its most delicate intelligence with its least delicate and dumbest man,” he continued,“How do you brief someone who already knows everything? Giving Donald Trump intelligence briefings is like giving trombone lessons to a goldfish.
There’s no point to it.”Kimmel then turned his attention to Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, who was under investigations by the House ethics committee over accusations of illicit drug use and having sex with a minor before resigning shortly after his cabinet announcement.Now, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, is advocating for the committee’s report to stay under seal, because Gaetz is a “private citizen”.“He became a private citizen five days ago when he resigned specifically to avoid you releasing the results of the investigation!” Kimmel fumed.“Somebody needs to put Mike Johnson back in the tree he lives in and release that report, because the spinelessness is staggering.
”And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on Johnson’s request for the House ethics committee not to release the report on Gaetz.“Though I’m sure if there’s anything in there, it’s minor,” he quipped.In a new interview, Caroline Kennedy, US ambassador to Australia and JFK’s daughter, said her cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr held “dangerous” views on vaccines.“Relatable,” said Meyers.“Who among us doesn’t have a cousin with a dangerous view on vaccines?”In other news, Joe Biden released a statement condemning a neo-Nazi march in Columbus, Ohio, “while Trump released a statement offering cabinet positions”, Meyers joked.
And the US Postal Service unveiled new stamps honoring the late Golden Girls star Betty White.“Now, you young people might not remember … but a stamp is like a sticker you put on mail to pay for its delivery,” said Meyers.
Warren Gatland is turning into the fall guy for all the failings of Welsh rugby | Andy Bull
Coach isn’t making the best out of Wales, but his troubled reign could force the country to confront the state it is inTwo years, four months and a lifetime ago, a Wales team not so very different from the one that will be on the field on Saturday beat the Springboks 13-12 in Bloemfontein. A lot of good Welsh sides have tried and failed to win in South Africa in the 60 years they have been touring. That team, coached by Wayne Pivac, and captained by Dan Biggar, were the first and only one to do it. They might even have won the series except the ifs and buts went against them in the first Test at Loftus Versfeld the previous week, when they lost 32-29 after Damian Willemse kicked a penalty in the final minute.Wales have fallen a long way in very little time
In Las Vegas, winning is what matters and Verstappen is awfully good at that
Beating Norris in Sin City will deliver a fourth successive title to the Red Bull driver and prove he makes his own luckMax Verstappen may have been dismissive in his opening assessment of last year’s inaugural Las Vegas Grand Prix but by the time he victoriously crossed the line under the neon glow of the Strip he had, as so many before, fallen to the wiles of Sin City. On the floors of the casinos amid the miasma of smoke and bellows of adulation at the roll of a dice, Verstappen is recognised as a man who makes his own luck and no city in the world is better placed to acknowledge that.As he stands ready to claim his fourth consecutive Formula One world championship, Las Vegas is the perfect backdrop for this singular driver. F1, which promotes the race, has spent a fortune on establishing it perhaps as the most striking example of turning a race weekend into an event. Each one a Super Bowl was the grand ambition when Liberty Media took over the sport in 2017 with races in “destination cities” and in Las Vegas it has that and the potential spectacle to match with a world champion ready to cash out again in Nevada
Festival of fast bowling leaves India on top after Australia collapse
More than any pitch in the world, people talk about Perth. In our collective memory, it was always the Waca, fast and furious enough for decades of sequels.These days the city’s cricket venue has hopped from the western bank of the Swan to the east at Perth Stadium, but in our collective contemporary consciousness the pitch is still essentially the Waca, spiritually the Waca. It was literally formed from the same clay, and as per the story about beings created that way, one half of the pair might as well have been made from the body of the other.So if you look at the scorecard for the first day of the Australia-India Test at Perth, you would very reasonably have one question first
Australia v India: first men’s Test, day one – as it happened
Thanks for your company on a pulsating opening day. Geoff’s hastily rewritten feature will be here soon, and we’ll be back for the second – maybe even the final – day in the morning. Goodnight!At the time, with Australia on top, Nathan Lyon’s spell of 5-1-23-0 seemed like a minor detail. Now it feels like a waste of 23 precious runs.Australia aren’t out of this but they surely need Alex Carey to get them to at least 100
Champion Ding and challenger Gukesh prepare for world title battle
China’s world champion, Ding Liren, 32, and his Indian rival Gukesh Dommaraju, at 18 the youngest ever title challenger, meet for the opening ceremony of their $2.6m 14-game title match in Singapore on Saturday, with the first game scheduled to start at 9am GMT (17.00 local time) on Monday.This will be the 50th contest for the crown since 1886, and the first where both contestants are Asian. The No 1 player of the time was almost always a participant, but not in 2023 or 2024
Sport may be a blunt tool of social change, but it’s time to take a stand against Israel | Jonathan Liew
Probably you already know what this is. Probably before you read a word of it, you decided what it was, where you stand on it, how you’re going to feel about it. The headline, there’s your first clue. Maybe you recognised the name of the writer and drew your own conclusions. And of course there’s the Guardian masthead at the top, the world’s leading bat‑signal for wet liberals, so already there’s a self‑selecting audience there
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