Late-night hosts on Tuesday discussed Donald Trump’s supposed crackdown on White House leakers in the aftermath of an aide’s comments about John McCain.
Stephen Colbert
“There is just so much news coming out of the White House these days, and some of it they actually want you to know,” Stephen Colbert began. “That news is called leaks, and right now the Trump administration is obsessed with them.”
Colbert then briefly explained the leak that’s most recently angered the White House. Kelly Sadler, a White House aide, said in a meeting that John McCain’s opposition to the nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA director doesn’t matter because “he’s dying anyway”.
“Sadler called Meghan McCain after this but she’s never publicly apologized, and neither has the White House,” the host said. “In fact, White House officials seem more upset that the story leaked than that Sadler said it.”
Sarah Sanders, Colbert noted, reportedly held a meeting during which she was “visibly angry” about the leak of Sadler’s comment and said, “I’m sure this conversation is going to leak too and that’s just disgusting.”
Colbert added: “This White House is so leaky there are even leaks about why they’re leaking.” The host cited an article in Axios, in which the “Trump administration’s most prolific leakers” explain their reason for leaking. One attributed it to “personal vendettas” while another said leaks are a way of having “an accurate record of what’s really going on in the White House”. A third leaker said: “It’s like playing with matches.”
“The White House has tried desperately to identify the leakers,” Colbert said, pointing to Trump’s tweet on Monday as evidence of his preoccupation with leaks.
“The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible,” Trump wrote. “With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!”
“So Trump says the White House isn’t full of leakers,” Colbert replied, “which is why he’s going to hunt them down.”
Trevor Noah
Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah also zeroed in on the leaks, as well as Trump and McCain’s shared animosity toward one another.
“Every day in the news we find out a new sordid detail about something that happened inside the White House,” Noah said. “Like when Ben Carson bought a $90,000 bean bag chair or when Mike Pence stood next to a painting of Dolley Madison without his wife present.
“The only reason we know about these stories is that the Trump White House has been plagued by incessant leaks,” he added. “And judging by his tweets, the president has had enough.”
After reading Trump’s tweet aloud, in which he says the issue of leaks is overstated but that his administration will nevertheless find out who is responsible, Noah said: “If I understand this correctly, Trump says there is no problem, and the people responsible for that problem he will personally disembowel.”
The host went on to call Sadler’s comments about McCain “in poor taste” and put them in context with Trump and McCain’s spats, beginning with Trump’s comments about preferring servicemen who weren’t captured and peaking, most recently, with McCain’s decision not to invite the president to his funeral. “Which, you have to admit, is the highest level of diss possible,” Noah joked. “To uninvite someone to something that you’re technically not even really going to be at it.
“Personally, I would want Trump at my funeral because I know he’d hate being at an event that wasn’t about him,” Noah said. “So McCain and Trump hate each other, which is why when the story came out the White House cared less about McCain’s feelings and more about the fact that the story was leaked in the first place.”
Noah continued: “If the White House had just apologized, this story would be dead and they wouldn’t have to worry about it. They don’t even have to mean it. But instead of apologizing, they’re digging in their heels.”
In footage from this week’s press briefing, Sarah Sanders refused to comment on or apologize for Sadler’s remarks, saying she was “not going to validate a leak” that came from “an internal staff meeting”.
“In Trump’s world, if you apologize you’re admitting that it happened, and for Trump that’s a sign of weakness,” Noah said. “But just because it wasn’t meant to get out doesn’t mean you can expect everyone to act like it didn’t happen. That’s not how this works.”