Watch Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers Slam Donald Trump’s Immigrant Ban
Late-night TV hosts took turns blasting President Donald Trump on Monday for signing an executive order that prevents refugees and immigrants from certain Muslim countries from entering the United States for 120 days. “The line moves really fast on this ride,” Stephen Colbert said of the Trump administration. “Every day you just get right back on the rollercoaster and start throwing up.”
The host’s monologue mixed incredulity – “There are currently more refugees around the world then at any time since World War II” – with biting humor. “The poem on the Statue of Liberty now reads, ‘Don’t let it hit ya where the good Lord split ya.'” “At Dulles, a five-year-old Iranian boy was detained for hours and kept from his mother,” Colbert added. “Or, as Kellyanne Conway calls it, ‘alternative daycare.'”
Colbert praised the protesters who flooded the nation’s airports over the weekend to voice resistance to Trump’s order. “All of this is upsetting if you’re one of those people who thought about it, which is why tens of thousands of protesters spontaneously demonstrated at airports all around the country,” he said. “Do you have any idea how angry how people have to be to voluntarily go to JFK?”
Seth Meyers made similar bleak observations about New York City airports, where refugees and even some legal Green Card holders were detained: “If you can spend more than two hours at JFK without losing your shit, you should get automatic citizenship.”
Meyers’ “Closer Look” segment was more direct than Colbert’s. Meyers called Trump’s immigrant ban “not only cruel and unnecessary, but apparently very poorly thought out.” “It’s only been a week … but the Trump administration has already revealed itself to be a government of incompetent authoritarians with nothing but contempt for many of the basic constitutional principles this country has cherished since its founding.”
Meyers proposed a potential solution that might help minimize the new President’s capacity to damage democracy. “Trump should be the first President that legally has to count to 100 before taking action,” Meyers said. “Not because he’ll think better of it, but because he’ll forget what it is.”
Colbert and Meyers’ critiques of Trump’s policy were echoed across television in other satirical and disbelieving bits by James Corden, Jimmy Kimmel, and Trevor Noah.
Donald Trump signed an executive order on the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines. Watch here.