Late Night Snark: Inmates Return to Run the Asylum Edition
"Well, ladies and gentlemen: it happened. Donald Trump is president again. I have an important announcement to make: for the next four years we get to live by airport rules: calories don’t count, and it's perfectly reasonable to have a vodka tonic at 8am."
—Stephen Colbert
"Trump's inauguration day falls on Martin Luther King Day. And if King were alive today I bet Trump would walk right up to him and say: 'Oh, snap! It's Ben Carson!'"
—Michael Che, SNL
"Former president Obama was there. George Bush seemed kind of there—definitely high. Even Mike Pence showed up, I guess to let the crowd finish the job. Only Michelle Obama seemed to have the consistent ethical stance of saying: when they go low, I stay the f*ck home."
—Jon Stewart
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"A lot of people were talking about Melania's outfit. People weren't sure if she was there for the inauguration or to kill Indiana Jones."
—Jimmy Fallon
"After the pompadour and circumstance, Trump took out his Sharpie and signed a stack of executive orders—about a hundred of them that covered a variety of subjects, including renaming the Gulf of Mexico the 'Gulf of America,' renaming Mount Denali 'Mount McKinley,' and renaming Melania 'Ivanka.' "
—Jimmy Kimmel
"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg flew down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump, and boy are his knees tired."
—Colin Jost, SNL
"When asked by a reporter yesterday if he would continue to sell products like the Trump meme coin that enriched him personally while in office, President Trump said, 'I don’t know much about it, other than I launched it.' Not a sentence you want to hear from a guy with the launch codes."
—Seth Meyers
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 24, 2025
Note: And now here’s the weather → the weather ← That was the weather. Thank you.
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By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til the government runs out of money: 49
Days 'til the Wuertz Farm Gourd Festival in Casa Grande, Arizona: 7
Percent of Americans polled by YouGov who oppose the pardons of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists: 75%
Percent drop in TV viewership of the 2025 inauguration versus Biden's 2021 inauguration: -27%
Percent drop in TV viewership between Trump's 2017 and 2025 inaugurations: -20%
Width of Australia from east to west, making it wider than the moon’s diameter (3,400 km): 4,000 km
Current worldwide box office total for Moana 2: 1.01 billion
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "What are you rebelling against, Johnny?" "Whaddya got?"
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CHEERS to a few cross words from a few angry benches. President Very Bad Man may have the power to pardon the worst human beings in the country (they did, after all, try to destroy our country four years ago), but that doesn’t mean the judges who originally sentenced them for their role in the insurrection have to stay silent about it. As of this evening, three judges have spoken out in words tossed in a blender and set to "unminced":
"No 'national injustice' occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election," Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in an order Wednesday. "No 'process of national reconciliation' can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity." […]
Caution: flying gavels.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, also made clear in a dismissal order for one Capitol defendant that Trump's sweeping pardons "will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021." […]
"No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,"said Judge Tanya Chutkan, another Obama appointee, in a brief order granting the dismissal of one rioter's criminal case. "The dismissal of this case cannot undo the 'rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage.' ... And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America's sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.
Wild guess: no Christmas card from the White House for these three this year.
CHEERS to putting the dicks in the Magnolia State on notice. Why should ladyparts be the only target of legislative banning and shaming in this new era of handmaid's tales? Pardon the pun, but—beats me! Thankfully, a Democrat down in Mississippi has introduced the Contraception Begins At Erection Act that would officially "ban men from masturbating or engaging in other sexual acts when they have no intent to fertilize an embryo."
In a statement to WLBT News, an NBC television affiliate in Jackson, [Bradford] Blackmon referred to the high number of state legislative bills introduced in recent years that target women's access to reproductive health care, specifically abortion and contraception.
State Sen. Blackmon (D) is playing dumbshittery jiu-jitsu.
"All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are fifty percent of the equation," he wrote.
"This bill highlights that fact and brings the man’s role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me."
If the legislation passes, it will be the first time in U.S. history that men are required to confirm compliance with an anti-masturbation law by submitting to Project 2025's "Hairy Palm Test." To be immediately followed by a new product on shelves at CVS: Nair for hands.
CHEERS to great moments in traction. On January 24, 1899, Humphrey O’Sullivan patented the rubber heel. That’s nice, but we’re partial to the steel-tipped toe (and the exposed Republican shin).
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to little misunderstandings. On January 25, 1995, the Norwegians fired a scientific rocket called a Black Brant XII into the air, and the Russians thought it might actually be an American Trident missile launched from a sub. What happened next was so hilarious…
As a result, fearing a high altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert, and the nuclear weapons command suitcase was brought to Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
[He] then had to decide whether or not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States.
The Norwegian rocket incident was the first and only incident where any nuclear weapons state had its nuclear briefcase activated and prepared for launching an attack.
How lucky was the world that day? Let me put it this way: the incident happened on the one day of his presidency when Boris Yeltsin wasn't drunk. That lucky.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Well, we survived—barely—week 1 under Very Bad Man. So now it’s time to veg in front of the flickering screen for 48 hours. Some choices tonight: Women’s U.S. Championships figure skating on NBC or a new episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us on the CW (both 8pm). If you’re a glutton for punishment, glutton Newt Gingrich is the guest on Firing Line (PBS) at 8:30. And we’ll be live-skeeting the classic Star Trek episode (H&I Network, 8pm) A Piece of the Action via hashtag #allstartrek over at BlueSky. (Click here to follow me there.)
Tonight: Kirk and Spock take on the gangsters of Sigma Iotia II.
The most popular movies and streamers are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. (Oscar nominees Nosferatu, Wicked, and Emilia Perez are now streaming at various places.) The NHL schedule is here, the NBA schedule is here, and the NFL AFC and NFC championship schedule is here. (As always, I'm putting all my money on whichever team’s offense uses Romulan-style cloaking technology.) If you’re a James Bond fan, the documentary From Roger Moore With Love premieres tomorrow night at 8 on the CW.
Massive national swoon alert: Timothee Chalamet hosts SNL.
60 Minutes is preempted by football this Sunday (how rude), but there’s a pair of Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes at 9 on the CW. After that, Sunday night TV becomes a barren wasteland of woe and Medicare Advantage ads.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Human dumpster full of rotten chicken carcasses Lindsey Graham (Fascist -SC); Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Sunday on CNN: Pritzker SMASH.
CNN's State of the Union: Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL); Worthless bag of bones and shit Lindsey Graham (Fascist-SC).
This Week: The Dictator’s border shithead Tom Homan; Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI); author Walter Isaacson; former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara.
Face the Nation: White House senior couch fornication adviser JD Vance; Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO).
Fox “We [Heart] Fascism” Sunday: Human toilet brush Tom Cotton (Fascist-AR).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 24, 2015
JEERS to a shoddy Arabian. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia died from an acute case of being 90. He'll be replaced by his more youthful 80 year-old half brother, Salman bin Abdulaziz. (Um...Gesundheit?) When asked how he plans to govern, Salman said, "Eh, we'll take it one beheading at a time."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the land down under. Hit it…
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Happy Australia Day 2025 this Sunday. But if you come near me with anything resembling vegemite, I'm calling in a drone to drop a loogie on your opera house.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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