Comedian Seth Meyers has blasted suggestions President Donald Trump will run for re-election in 2020 after his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday after he pled guilty to charges including campaign finance violations.
Meyers said charges surely weren't far away for Trump himself, given his alleged involvement in Cohen's crimes.
Read more: "This was part of a pattern": Congressman says Cohen's prison sentence is beginning of the end for Donald Trump
"Today the man who made payments [to cover up alleged affairs], Trump's ex-fixer Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in jail," the comedian said during the "A Closer Look" segment of Late Night With Seth Meyers. "And during the hearing, Cohen told the court in no uncertain terms that he committed those crimes at the direction of Donald Trump."
"Forget running for re-election. In two years, Trump might be running from the feds," he quipped. "The FBI is going to bust into a cabin in Montana and find Trump with a Unabomber beard surrounded by Burger King wrappers."
The situation was ironic, given Trump and his colleagues' fondness of the phrase "America is a nation of laws," Meyers said. The comedian illustrated his point by showing a clip of Trump giving the line to a journalist in answer to a question about the caravan of asylum-seeking migrants that recently arrived at the U.S. border.
The journalist asked Trump during a press conference: "In your opinion or in your estimation, what percentage of those people do you believe are deserving of asylum in the U.S.?"
"Well, I won't get into percentages," the president replied. "But we are a nation of laws."
"It's especially infuriating to watch Trump pretend to care about the law when his own Justice Department just accused him of a crime for paying hush money to cover up affairs," Meyers commented.
Other republicans are also "getting squishy" on the "nation of laws" rhetoric, the comedian added, using outgoing Utah senator Orrin Hatch as an example. Hatch previously suggested the charges against Cohen were part of a Democratic conspiracy to undermine the president. "The Democrats will do anything to hurt this president. Anything," Hatch told CNN Monday.
When reminded the allegations came from the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, Hatch responded: "Okay, but I don't care. "
The Republican Party's belief in America as a nation of laws, Meyers said, was about "punishing immigrants," not respecting justice.
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Katherine Hignett is a reporter based in London. She currently covers current affairs, health and science. Prior to joining Newsweek ... Read more
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