Once again, late night shows were racing to keep up with Donald Trump, as he smoothly quelled the uproar over Sally Yates’ testimony yesterday by firing FBI Director James Comey, right about the time writers’ rooms were finishing up the night’s monologues. So The Daily Show ended up giving half the segment to Yates and half to the late-breaking developments out of Washington. Fortunately, there really wasn’t much of a need to write jokes about Comey’s firing, because simply reading Trump’s letter to Comey—in which he claimed he was firing the FBI director over his treatment of Hillary Clinton—is hilarious all on its own.
Still, things are moving so fast now that talk about Yates seems like a pleasant trip back in time to the halcyon days when we had an FBI director. Yates scored some rhetorical points and so does Noah—pointing out that the president suffers from a condition Noah identifies as “Vagina Neck” counts as an Edward R. Murrow–size win these days, simply because it will enrage America’s vainest president. But the big winner tonight is Ted Cruz. Is there any doubt The Daily Show had clips of Yates handing his ass to him all cued up and ready to go? (What a difference a year makes!) Maybe that’s what will get Trump to realize he’s made a mistake: the gnawing feeling that he accidentally saved Ted Cruz from public humiliation.
