{"id":169761,"date":"2025-12-05T16:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/169761\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:49:07","slug":"stephen-colbert-on-pete-hegseths-venezuela-scandal-frantically-pointing-the-finger-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/169761\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert on Pete Hegseth\u2019s Venezuela scandal: \u2018Frantically pointing the finger\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s renaming of the Institute of Peace, Pete Hegseth<\/a>\u2019s ongoing Venezuela scandal and a new batch of photos from Epstein Island.<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/a> opened Thursday\u2019s Late Show with a note about the president\u2019s meeting with leaders from the auto industry, where announced that he would do away with<\/a> the guidances enacted by Joe Biden to make more electric cars. \u201cThis is a Green New Stand,\u201d said Trump in the Oval Office. \u201cAnd people were paying too much for a car that didn\u2019t work as well \u2026 All of the nonsense is going to be taken out of the cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you need in a car is the basics, folks,\u201d said Colbert in his Trump voice. \u201cYou need the gas pedal, you need the steering wheel, and a little hula lady on the dashboard. Dance for me, tiny ukulele bride!\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also said he would cancel the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s \u201cabsurd\u201d tailpipe emission standards. \u201cWell, that makes sense,\u201d said Colbert. \u201cI mean, standing behind a tailpipe is how he applies his makeup.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other Washington news this week, the Trump administration managed to get the name changed<\/a> at the supposedly non-partisan Institute of Peace, which is now named \u2026 the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace.<\/p>\n

In a post to its official account on X, the state department said that the name was changed to \u201creflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you talking about?! The \u2018greatest dealmaker\u2019?\u201d Colbert scoffed. \u201cCritics were surprised,\u201d he noted, because the administration had previously called the institute \u201cbloated and useless\u201d. \u201cSo, Donald Trump<\/a>,\u201d Colbert laughed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth<\/a>, remains in hot water for bombing what the administration claimed, without evidence, are drug smugglers off the coast of Venezuela and, in September, executing survivors of an attack with a second strike. Even members of Hegseth\u2019s own party have noted that this constitutes a violation of international law.<\/p>\n

Hegseth has been \u201cfrantically pointing the finger\u201d at Frank \u201cMitch\u201d Bradley<\/a>, the navy admiral overseeing the operation. And on Thursday, \u201cMitch testified and frankly, things went bradly,\u201d Colbert joked.<\/p>\n

Bradley told lawmakers that the two survivors of the initial strike in September were attempting to continue their drug run, as they were seen still onboard the damaged vessel alongside packages of illegal narcotics. \u201cYeah, but the boat was blown to bits!\u201d Colbert responded. \u201cHow were they going to continue their drug run? Ride to Miami on the back of dolphin drug mules?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> revealed that, according to Google, he was the third-most trending person in the world for 2025, behind the singer d4vd<\/a> (a suspect in a grisly murder) and rapper Kendrick Lamar (\u201cwho murdered Drake this year at the half-time of the Super Bowl<\/a>\u201d, Kimmel joked).<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this would\u2019ve ever happened without the support of loyal viewers like President Trump, who has done so much this year to raise awareness of our show,\u201d the host said. \u201cThank you, Mr President, for making me No 3 in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI beat Diddy<\/a>! How did I beat Diddy this year?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kimmel then turned to more Trump news: \u201cWe\u2019re all aware of how hungry for praise he is constantly, but I\u2019m always surprised by how eager his suck-ups are to feed it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

That would be, in this case, the US Institute of Peace, now renamed the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace \u2013 \u201cand casino\u201d, Kimmel added.<\/p>\n

A White House spokesperson defended the renaming, claiming the agency \u201cwas once a bloated, useless entity that blew $50m per year while delivering no peace\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they named it after another bloated, useless entity that provides no peace,\u201d said Kimmel.<\/p>\n

The Daily Show<\/p>\n

Only two weeks remain until the deadline for the Department of Justice to release all its files related to the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>. \u201cAnd Pam Bondi, if you\u2019re listening, it\u2019s still not too late to release them Advent-calendar-style,\u201d said Jordan Klepper on the Daily Show.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, House Democrats continue to release some of the documents in their possession. \u201cWhat\u2019s in this latest drop?\u201d Klepper wondered. \u201cIs it emails? Maybe bank records?\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, it was more than 150 photos and videos<\/a> of the vast Caribbean estate commonly known as \u201cEpstein Island\u201d, including images of the pool area, bedrooms and bathrooms, and a framed photo of Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, meeting Pope John Paul II. \u201cWow, I can\u2019t believe it. The face of the world\u2019s most notorious pedophile ring got to meet Jeffrey Epstein?\u201d Klepper joked. \u201cThat\u2019s the most \u2018game recognize game\u2019 photo I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow this release doesn\u2019t contain any major bombshells,\u201d Klepper noted, \u201cbut we did learn one new thing: Epstein Island looked like shit.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow does a billionaire\u2019s private island look like a two-star AirBnb?\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019m not even talking about the sex rooms \u2013 the common spaces are even worse,\u201d such as the \u201clibrary\u201d with four patterned recliners clumped together facing together in the center of the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeffrey, come on! You have all the money in the world but you don\u2019t have one pal who gets a Herman Miller catalogue?\u201d said Klepper in mock disgust. \u201cThe pedophile billionaire couldn\u2019t find one pedophile decorator to help out here? And don\u2019t say it was Ghislaine\u2019s job to decorate, because that\u2019s sexist. She was a working professional who was very busy with her own sex-trafficking career.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump\u2019s renaming of the Institute of Peace, Pete Hegseth\u2019s ongoing Venezuela scandal and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-169761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}