After soberly calling for the immediate removal of Donald Trump from office on Wednesday night, Seth Meyers turned his attention on Thursday to the Republican lawmakers and Fox News media stars who are actually still defending the president after he instigated a coup attempt by his supporters to take the U.S. Capitol.
“Why isn’t Congress immediately convening to remove the leader of a violent insurrectionist movement from the presidency?” the Late Night host asked in his final “A Closer Look” segment of this endless first week of January.
And yet while many Democratic leaders and some Republicans are doing just that, senators like Josh Hawley (R-MO) are “doubling down” on their objections to the 2020 election results. “Hawley, Cruz and the rest of the sedition caucus should be expelled from Congress, shamed and disgraced,” Meyers said. “They should be remembered in history forever as seditionists who attempted a coup.”
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And just for good measure, he said that Cruz should also be remembered as “looking like an alcoholic werewolf who got stuck halfway between transformations.”
“But instead of wearing the shame they deserve and slinking away in disgrace, many of the well-paid provocateurs in the right-wing media who have spent years fomenting the lies and conspiracy theories that led to this moment,” Meyers added, “they’re doubling down, repeating the gross and baseless lie that it actually wasn’t Trump supporters that stormed the capitol, it was antifa.”
After playing clips of everyone from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Sarah Palin to Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity pushing that false claim, the host shouted, “Their faces are on camera, you assholes! Some of them were quoted on the record in newspapers.”
Meyers then explained that the report that they based their “lies and bullshit on was also bullshit,” pointing to reports that showed the facial recognition software that allegedly identified “antifa infiltrators” actually identified two neo-Nazis and a QAnon supporter.
“Oh, well that’s a little bit of an ‘oops,’ isn’t it?” he said. “And I’m sure Gaetz and all the craven Fox News ghouls who repeated this disgusting lie to defend a violent insurrection will immediately apologize.”
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