Jimmy Kimmel: Trump's 'minions are working hard right now to poison the well'

Jimmy Kimmel

The national embarrassment Jimmy Kimmel has termed “Squattergate” – Donald Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election and facilitate the transition of power – sputtered along on Tuesday evening, the day before the deadline for the Trump campaign to request a recount in Wisconsin. The recount for a state Biden won by over 20,000 votes would cost the Trump campaign $8m, “which is why he’s asking his supporters for $16m – a little walking around money on the side,” Kimmel joked.

“The only way Wisconsin is getting $8m from Donald Trump is if it has sex with him 63 times.”

Meanwhile, “the president’s minions are working hard right now to poison the well,” Kimmel continued, such as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who, in a phone call over the weekend, pressured Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to throw out legally cast ballots in certain counties, according to Raffensperger.

Graham is “one of many Republicans who still refuse to acknowledge publicly that Joe Biden won the election”, Kimmel explained. “Behind the scenes, though, it’s a different story.” On the Senate floor on Tuesday, Graham gave a congratulatory fist bump and pat to Kamala Harris. “It’s almost as if Lindsey Graham is an unscrupulous opportunist who blows whichever way the wind goes.”

Related: Seth Meyers on Trump's 'recount fund': 'Everything he does is a scam'

Finally, Biden reportedly told advisers this week that he doesn’t want his presidency consumed by investigations into Trump’s corruption. “Which is big of him,” said Kimmel, “but what about what I want? I at least want a mugshot out of this. I want to see Trump in a jumpsuit that matches his skin.”

Stephen Colbert

“Two weeks to the day since the election and I’m beginning to breathe easier,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It’s like I’ve had this weight lifted off my chest. Doctors say it was 239lb, but it sure felt heavier.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, “the president is slowly, agonizingly going through the five stages of narcissistic grief: denial, denial, denial, denial, denial and denial. I know that’s six, but Rudy [Giuliani] is demanding a recount.”

The denial continues even as the Trump campaign’s legal strategy against the election falls apart, with cases dropped this week in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin. “To be clear: ‘dropped.’ Those are withdrawn cases. They didn’t even lose them – they pre-lost them. That’s like coming in last in the Indy 500 because you decided not to buy a car.”

Trevor Noah

And on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah condemned the Trump administration’s reckless messaging on gatherings for Thanksgiving as cases surge and hospitals across the nation prepare to be overrun, if they’re not overstretched already. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who somehow serves as Trump’s adviser on infectious diseases, told Fox News isolation of the elderly should outweigh Covid concerns for large, intergenerational groups – “for many people, this is their final Thanksgiving, believe it or not,” Atlas said. “I think we have to have a policy, which I have been advocating, which is a whole person, whole health policy.”

“This dude can’t be serious,” said Noah. “‘For many people this will be their final Thanksgiving?’ I mean, yes, thanks to the Trump administration, there’s definitely going to be many people’s final Thanksgiving, but still.

“If you get corona, that’s the ‘whole’ thing,” he added. “It’s not like you’re gonna say ‘well, I died of Covid, but damn those mashed potatoes were great.’”

While it’s of course important for people to see their families, Noah continued, “it’s more important to be able to see you family for the next 10 Thanksgivings – they’ll hopefully get to be with you in person after all of this is done.

“It’s so hilarious that conservatives have ended up here,” he added. “Because when this pandemic started, you remember, they said ‘we don’t need to shut down the economy, just be safe and responsible.’ Then they were like ‘we don’t have to wear masks to protect the elderly.’ Now they’re like ‘you know what, bring the elderly in here, I can’t fit all those leftovers in my fridge.’”

The shifting, groundless messaging “just doesn’t make sense”, Noah concluded. “It doesn’t make sense why Trump is willing to risk old people being exposed to corona this much – unless he thinks that it will end up making him look good in the long run, because you won’t have old people dying if all the old people are already dead.”