Seth Meyers on Trump: ‘His staffing picks have been obscene’
Late-night hosts expressed surprise and glee as Matt Gaetz withdrew himself from the attorney general confirmation process.The Late Night host Seth Meyers said that Trump’s presidential comeback hit its “first major roadblock” with his pick for attorney general taking himself out of the process.Matt Gaetz removed himself after just eight days with Meyers joking that “once again, he can’t even make it to 18”.The “accused sexual predator” had already been in the centre of a scandal involving sex with a 17-year-old and was now being accused of the same thing with another teenager.Gaetz “saw the writing on the wall” and stepped down after he was asked to respond to the second allegation.
“They asked him for a comment and his comment was I quit,” he said.Meyers said that Trump’s “entire cabinet is a scandal-plagued army of business orcs and reality TV doofuses” and that Gaetz dropping out “should pave the way to focus on the other dangerous nominees”.He played a clip of anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr joking that he has so many skeletons in his closet that if they could vote, he would be president.“They’re only skeletons because they refused to get vaccinated for measles,” Meyers quipped.He added: “Even by Trump’s degraded standards, his staffing picks have been obscene.
”He said that Trump had been going for the “biggest creeps” and returned to Gaetz who was accused of “sex trafficking through Venmo” which, if nothing else, is “deeply lazy”.Meyers ended by saying the scandal “should serve as a reminder to everyone that politics and journalism still matter”.On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert started by saying that a week out from Thanksgiving, “we already have something to be thankful for” with Gaetz dropping out.“Thank you sweet Turkey Jesus,” he added.Gaetz was accused of having a threesome on an air hockey table.
“Who was the threeway with?” he asked.“Dave and Buster?”His statement claimed he was dropping out so that he didn’t act as a distraction from Trump and Vance.“All of this attention on this sex criminal was unfairly distracting from the work of all the other sex criminals who’ve been nominated and elected,” Colbert said.He then said that while Trump is almost about to be president once again, he “will never give up on his true passion: grifting”.Trump is now selling signed Maga guitars for $1,000.
“If you purchase one of these then you are divorced,” he said.Colbert said it would give you a guitar from “one of the world’s most renowned not guitar players”.On Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host said that Trump was “determined to fill his cabinet with not just clowns but demented sewer clowns”.Kimmel spoke of Gaetz choosing to “take his Maga hat out of the ring” and also poked fun at his statement about protecting Trump, saying that people “should not be distracted from his critical work of creating other distractions all the time”.He then asked what critical work Trump actually does other than “watching UFC fights with Kid Rock”.
He spoke of the “damning accusations” against Gaetz and joked that “one thing you can say is he was putting young people to work”.Kimmel also said he believed that Trump did things in the wrong order joking that “first you nominate Diddy for attorney general then Matt Gaetz”.There is also a “new conspiracy theory” that on Trump’s recent visit to SpaceX with Elon Musk, he used a body double.Kimmel showed the picture and said that it “looks like he was out at the barbecue and the grill exploded”.He then asked: “Don’t these conspiracy guys take at least a couple of weeks off after the election?”
Jaguar boss defends new ad and rebrand amid ‘vile hatred’ online
The boss of Jaguar has defended the company’s move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes” after a clip of its new advert was met with a barrage of “vile hatred and intolerance” online.This week, Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury UK carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors, posted a 30-second clip on X featuring models in brightly coloured clothing set against equally vibrant backdrops, without a car or the company’s traditional cat logo.“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times of the company’s “copy nothing” campaign.The new ad and rebrand prompted a backlash online, including on X where the platform’s chief executive, Elon Musk, posted: “Do you sell cars?”In response, Glover said, “Yes
Energy bills, mortgages, food: will cost of living surge again under Labour?
Labour swept to power in the wake of a cost of living crisis that hit households hard, with the price of food and energy rocketing alongside the impact of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget on mortgage rates.At 2.3%, inflation is nowhere the 10% peak after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it is creeping up, and could hit 3% in 2025, say forecasters.Here are some of the pressures households are likely to face in the coming months at a time when the government claims to be “fixing the foundations” of the economy.Ofgem announced its latest price cap on Friday morning, with average energy bills to increase by 1
I’ve joined Bluesky and it feels like a breath of fresh air – in some ways… | John Naughton
As I write, there’s a window on my laptop screen that is providing a live view of a stampede. It’s logging the numbers of people joining the social network Bluesky. At the moment, the number of registered users is 20.5 million. By the time you read this there will be more than 30 million of them, judging by the rate that people are currently joining
‘We live in a climate of fear’: graphic novelist’s Elon Musk book can’t find UK or US publisher
A biography by a British graphic novelist of Elon Musk is struggling to find an English-language publisher due to feared “legal consequences”.Elon Musk: Investigation into a New Master of the World is the latest graphic novel by Darryl Cunningham, from West Yorkshire. Cunningham, 64, has written and illustrated seven nonfiction books on topics ranging from the 2008 global economic meltdown (Supercrash), to Russian leader Vladimir Putin (subtitled The Rise of a Dictator).His first book, Psychiatric Tales, which drew on his time working on an acute psychiatric ward, was called an “unsettling but rewarding experience” in an Observer review in 2010.Although his previous books have all found publishers in the UK and America, there has been silence on the Elon Musk project, despite the fact that it has already been translated into French and published in France to positive reviews
England’s Jordan Cox an injury doubt for first Test in New Zealand
England were sweating on the fitness of Jordan Cox for Thursday’s first Test against New Zealand after the wicketkeeper suffered a blow to his hand before the final day of their solitary warm-up match in Queenstown.Cox, 24, had been due to make his Test debut behind the stumps at Hagley Oval in Christchurch with Jamie Smith, the regular gloveman, missing the tour for paternity leave. But the prospect of his first Test cap will now hinge on the severity of an injury to his right hand that was sustained while batting in the nets on Sunday.As Cox went off to a local hospital in Queenstown for a scan, the knock-on effect in the short term was the sight of Ollie Pope taking the gloves on day two of England’s practice match against the New Zealand Prime Minister’s XI. Ben Stokes, who is fully fit but opted to sit out the first day, took the field to captain the side
Stokes and McCullum need strong start to year that could define Bazball
The way the cricket calendar is carved up sounds a bit absurd; a kind of speed-dating event for the chief executives and chairs of the full-member nations that is hosted every four years by the International Cricket Council. Not that the ICC – more events company than governing body – gets involved. Its officials apparently have to leave the room before the bigwigs start schmoozing at the tables and operations types plumb the fixtures into their spreadsheets.The men’s future tours programme emerged from one of these opaque lock-ins in 2022 and even at the time England’s winter of 2024-25 stuck out as slightly unimaginative. Test tours of Pakistan and New Zealand were scheduled for the second winter in two years, the latter for the third time in five
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