Late Night Goes to Town on 'End of an Error'

Late night hosts made no attempt to hide their glee on Tuesday night, with hours left in Donald Trump's presidency. Jimmy Kimmel called it "the end of an error" and questioned whether the presidency was worth it for Trump. "Six years ago, we were all perfectly fine to let him keep bumbling around New York, pretending to be a billionaire," he said, per the New York Times. "Probably would've landed a sweet gig as the cranky TV judge on some hooded celebrity pie-eating competition. That's where Donald Trump belonged." A late night roundup of what happened instead:

• "We found out he pays no taxes; he has no money; he is likely to face criminal charges in New York," Kimmel said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now "nobody will do business with him" and "he'll be generally thought of as the worst president in the history of the United States."
• Late Show host Stephen Colbert referred to Trump as "he who shall remain shameless." Summing up four years, he noted "you didn't exactly know where he was going or what he was talking about but it made you feel dirty and you knew it wasn't good for children." "In the end, the takeaway from this presidency is 'Take him away,'" he added.

• "What did you come here to do? Wreck the economy, spread disease, and take selfies with cans of beans?" said Late Night host Seth Meyers. "It's not just that Trump inhabits an unhinged fantasy world, which he does, or that he and his aides lie as easily as they breathe, which they do. It's that the entire federal bureaucracy was dragged into defending a narcissistic president’s delusion and anyone who refused to support the lie was punished," he went on.
• Trevor Noah compared Trump to the coronavirus. "I hope that he slowly fades away like one of his tans. And I know that he'll never be fully gone, all right? He's basically the COVID of politics," he said on the Daily Show, per the Times. "America's gonna be experiencing side effects long after he's out of the system. And, unfortunately, we're probably gonna see mutated strains, as well."
• Meanwhile, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon imagined the scene at the White House, where "Trump's four remaining staffers toasted him by raising a glass of bleach." He joked that they were signing each other's yearbooks with, "I won't testify against you if you don't testify against me." "I think everyone is ready for Trump to move on," he added, noting Wednesday would feel "probably like that moment when they pull the nasal swab out of your nose."

(More late night talk show stories.)