What do Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Donald Trump and Star Wars have in common? Late night comedy! (Photo: IM collage)
Donald Trump is still the undisputed king of Late Night jokes, but Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz scored some points last night in the funny sweepstakes. Schultz sparked political frisson this week by announcing plans to explore an independent campaign for president.
The billionaire coffee slinger clearly set his sights on Democrats, even though he claimed Trump would be the principal focus of his campaign. The upshot: A split vote could make it possible for Trump to win a second term.
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You may recall, the wag who shouted out at a Howard Schultz news conference: “Don’t help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire asshole!”
Seth Meyers took it from there.
“It is not good when people are yelling at you at your first campaign event,” Meyers said. “He’s like a stand-up comedian who gets heckled before he’s even told a joke.”
Meyers put his finger on the problem. America is fed up with billionaire businessmen like Howard Schultz. “I guess somebody really put a stink on that genre,” he pointedly said as Trump appeared on the screen.
“Running as a billionaire now is like saying: ‘We should do a music festival with Ja Rule on an island,’” he said, a reference to the disastrous Frye festival.
“Personally, I’m more of a Dunkin’ Donuts guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to vote for the CEO, who I assume is just a drunk guy in a Bruins jersey chucking snowballs off a highway overpass,” Meyers said.
“He could just run against them in a Democratic primary,” said Meyers. “But he wants to bypass the process because he thinks he’s entitled to it. That’s right: the guy who ran Starbucks doesn’t want to wait in line.”
Meyers may have provided a brief respite from the constant barrage of Trump jokes, but Stephen Colbert wasn’t about to let the president off the hook. There’s just too much fodder for late night foolery to pass up.
For one, there was Trump’s clash with his intelligence chiefs. They provided their annual World Threat Assessment report and it contradicted the president on three major areas.
ISIS is still a significant threat in Syria and Iraq; North Korea is moving ahead with its nuclear weapons programs and Russia is still a major cyber threat to the country. Oh, and they also failed to include the “crisis” at the southern boarder as a national threat.
Trump rolled out his standard response. He claimed the comments were taken out of context and amounted to “fake news.” Except the intelligence chiefs gain their assessment on live television, leaving no room for misinterpretation.
“What do you mean they were misquoted?” Colbert interjected. “There were cameras. It was live. We all watched it.”
To prove his point, Colbert went to the videotape, a montage of Trump’s pronouncements juxtaposed with comments by the intelligence chiefs.
“Some would say Donald Trump is denying reality at a level that is clinically insane,” Colbert said. “Others would say… that, too.”
Jimmy Kimmel played off the deep freeze sweeping much of the nation. “The president beat the cold this morning by tweeting so much his phone began to act as a space heater,” he said. “He tweeted 11 times before 10am.”
Kimmel zeroed in on Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency so he could raid funds set aside for real emergencies–like floods and hurricanes–to start building his wall.
“Sometimes I’m amazed that he only bankrupted three casinos,” Kimmel deadpanned.
Kimmel also noted that Trump appears to be getting his fear-mongering material from the movies.
The president’s latest claims about prayer rugs found in the desert; sex trafficking women bound by duct tape; drug lords using powerful trucks to elude border agents were all lifted from the 2018 movie “Sicario: Day of the Soldado.”
President Ronald Reagan was often caught telling anecdotes about himself that were actually from his movie roles. But then, he was certifiably senile.
“It’s a good thing the president hasn’t seen Star Wars, because he’d probably be asking for money to build a death star right now.”
No word yet on how Trump feels about Schwartz invading his turf, but keep an eye on Twitter.
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