The hosts of late night had plenty of material to get stuck into following the release of a secret tape recording between President Donald Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen.
In the audio clip released by CNN earlier this week, then-presidential candidate Trump is heard talking with his lawyer about buying the rights to Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair she had with Trump before the 2016 election.
The tape was, of course, the main topic of discussion across late-night TV on Wednesday, with many of the hosts breaking down the transcript and dissecting exactly what was said by the current U.S. president.
On the “Late Show”, Stephen Colbert pointed out that the audio reveals that Trump knew about the payments during the presidential campaign, something which he’d previously denied.
“Donald Trump lied. So now they have to reset the sign on the White House lawn,” he said, before cutting to a photo of a sign hung from the White House gates that read: “It’s been 0 Minutes since our last lie.”
Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, compared the tape to a mob movie and played the audio over footage from “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos”. He also said that, had this situation happened to any other American president, “there would be an address to the nation tonight.”
“He would be sitting at a desk, arms folded, serious face; he’d apologize to his wife, his family, possibly Jesus, I dunno. But for this president, there’s no statement; for him, it’s just Wednesday.”
On “The Tonight Show”, Jimmy Fallon pretended to have obtained two new tapes, one of which sees Trump distracted from the conversation due to his soda obsession, a reference to a moment in the real tape where Trump yells for someone to “get him a Coke!”
Over at “The Daily Show”, Trevor Noah was disturbed that we know so much about Trump’s sexual exploits. “It is a little weird that we know so much about where the president has put his d**k,” he stated.
“That’s not normal. In all of American history it’s only been Trump, Clinton, and Lincoln, and yes, I said Lincoln because you know, at some point, Abraham put it in that big sexy hat.”
See more in the videos above.
