Late night hosts tore into Democrats who split with their own party to join Republicans to end the government shutdown on Monday.
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers all tore into the eight breakaway purple state senators (including one Independent) who decided to help strike a deal to conclude the longest shutdown in American history.
Stewart spent his opening of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show monologue raging about the subject: “Tonight’s show will be brought to you by ‘I can’t fucking believe it,’” he said. “You had the wind at your back! Election victories all over the country … Democrats, you sold out the entire shutdown not to get what you want, but for a promise to not get what you want later … This is a world-class collapse by Democrats … It would be like being up 10 points with three minutes left to go in a game and still finding a way to miraculously lose it for the fourth time in just one month … This is what the Democrats have squandered: A country finally shaking off Trump’s Jedi mind tricks and saying, ‘No, these are the fucking droids we’re looking for.’ And instead of pressing that advantage, the Democrats just went, “Droids? I guess we aren’t looking for those droids. But you’ll help us find them later, right?’ They squandered their leverage, sapped their voters’ enthusiasm, and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”
While Colbert groused on CBS’ The Late Show: “The shutdown may have been long and painful for millions of Americans, but at least it achieved jack squat.” The comedian singled out Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., saying she “crumbled like a granola bar in your backpack,” and quoted her saying constituents are asking: “Why can’t you all just work together to address the problems that are facing this country?” Colbert shot back: “‘Cause the country is being run by insane people.”
And NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers said: “Polls have consistently shown that voters blame Donald Trump and the Republican Party for the government shutdown. Republicans are fighting with each other over Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to produce a health care plan [and] Americans overwhelmingly support the Democrats’ push to keep health care costs down. The president’s poll numbers are historically bad. He just got booed at a football game, and voters handed Democrats huge victories in Tuesday’s election. So naturally, Senate Democrats looked at all of that and said: ‘Now is the time to cave.’”
Senators who flipped on the matter suggested the shutdown wasn’t successfully achieving their goals given firm Republican resistance to making major concessions, and in the meantime was hurting government employees and causing significant travel disruptions — especially with the Thanksgiving holiday looming right around the corner.
