Wanda Sykes on Trump’s Facebook return: ‘Like letting Hannibal Lecter babysit your most delicious child’

Guardian staff
·5 min read

The Daily Show

Wanda Sykes, the Daily Show’s guest host for the week, tore into Meta’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump to Facebook and Instagram on Thursday evening. “I mean, letting Trump back on Facebook is crazy. You’re just asking for trouble,” she said. “It’s like letting Hannibal Lecter babysit your most delicious child.

“But Facebook is putting him back online anyway, because they say that ‘the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying,’” she continued, quoting the company’s public statement on the matter. “And to that, let me say: phooey’

“We all know Facebook is losing a ton of money, and they want that Trump attention back,” she explained. “They need a hit! Trump is their White Lotus. He’s the Jennifer Coolidge of the internet.”

Related: Kimmel on Pence documents: ‘Really throwing Republicans for a loop’

Sykes then offered an experiment to test out Trump’s return to Meta’s platforms. “I think for the first week, they should only allow him to post cat photos,” she said. “Let’s see how it goes. And if you see a bunch of cats storming the Capitol – although adorable, shut it down.”

Stephen Colbert

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also lamented Trump’s return to Facebook. “That’s a punishment for all of us,” he said.

Trump’s two-year ban on Meta platforms following January 6 has now expired, and Meta determined he could be reinstated because his “risk to public safety” had “sufficiently receded”.

“The risk has receded because he’s been gone!” Colbert exclaimed, comparing Meta’s logic to thinking, “you know, between knife thrusts, Jack the Ripper is a pretty chill dude.”

Upon reinstatement, Trump must follow Meta’s updated community guidelines, which prohibit violence and incitement, fraud and deception, and hate speech. “So all the former president’s love languages,” Colbert quipped.

In addition, Meta said since Trump already declared his candidacy for president in 2024, he’s not subject to fact-checking. “Meta! What are you thinking? You can’t allow him to post conspiracy theories on Facebook!” Colbert reacted. “That’s your mom’s friend’s job – ‘for the last time, Cathy, teenagers are not identifying as gerbils and demanding taxpayer-funded woodchips.’”

Seth Meyers

On Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Tucker Carlson’s latest conspiracy theory, this time on how classified documents found at Mike Pence’s Indiana residence were concocted to make Trump look bad.

“Probably the craziest reaction to the Pence news has come from Fox host Tucker Carlson,” he explained, “who concocted an elaborate fantasy where the DoJ asked Pence to look for the documents, assuming he had none, in order to make Trump look bad by comparison, so that they could then prosecute Trump.”

Meyers imitated Carlson’s fallacy-filled delivery: “It’s possible, in fact it’s likely, they were planning on asking Mike Pence to go undercover as Donald Trump. And if that was the plan, how would they do it? Would they have arrested Donald Trump so they could perform an experimental surgery wherein they removed Donald Trump’s face and swap it with Mike Pence just like they did to John Travolta and Nicolas Cage?

“In reality, the Biden and Pence revelations show this is a lot more commonplace than most of us realized,” Meyers concluded, “and if Trump had just given the documents back when asked, there wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel celebrated the 20th anniversary of his show, which premiered after the Super Bowl on 26 January 2003.

“Why these people at ABC hired me, I still have no idea,” he joked in an emotional monologue. “I feel like at some point, ABC just forgot they were paying the show, like a 24-hour fitness membership, and it went on.

“When we started, there were no iPhones, there was no YouTube, there was no Uber, no Twitter, no wifi, no Netflix, no Google,” he said. “We had Nokias and Ask Jeeves and that was it.

“We’ve been through two wars, a worldwide pandemic, four presidents, one insurrection, at least three different Kanyes,” he added, displaying a Blockbuster card for the show. “If you told me we were going to last longer than Blockbuster, I would’ve sooner believed I’d be working at Blockbuster in 20 years.”

Kimmel got choked up thanking his executive producers, staff, family and “everybody at ABC who didn’t fire me.

“Every day it takes a lot of people to make something this dumb,” he said. “And we’ve covered a lot of dumb stuff over the past 20 years, from Snooki to Honey Boo Boo, Ken Bone to Sarah Palin, Sanjaya, Clay Aiken, chocolate rain, double rainbow, Stormy Daniels, William Hung, the astronaut diaper lady, Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape, Pam & Tommy’s sex tape. The Octomom – I think she made a sex tape. Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s balls. I have been allowed to use this platform to speak out about issues that matter to me, like healthcare and sensible gun laws.

“Thank you for your patience,” he concluded. “I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I appreciate it. I don’t take this for granted, and I appreciate that as long as I am here, you’ll never have to see Matt Damon’s stupid face on this show.”

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