Seth Meyers In his latest Closer Look segment, Seth Meyers addressed sustained protests against anti-black racism and the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last week, and Donald Trump’s authoritarian responses in Washington, which have become so egregious that even his former defense secretary Jim Mattis publicly denounced him. Despite saying upon his resignation last year that he would “not speak ill of a sitting president”, Mattis warned Americans in an article in the Atlantic this week that they “must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our constitution”. In response, the president tweeted: “Probably the only thing Barack Obama & I have in common is that we both had the honor of firing Jim Mattis, the world’s most overrated General…His nickname was ‘Chaos,’ which I didn’t like & changed to ‘Mad Dog’.” “OK, first of all, he resigned. You didn’t fire him,” Meyers corrected. “Second, you didn’t come up with the name Mad Dog. He’s had it since at least 2004, and we know you didn’t come up with it because it’s a cool nickname and your nicknames suck … if you had come up with a nickname for him it would’ve been something like Lame James or Jumpin’ Jim.” It’s clear, Meyers continued, that “Trump and the police establishment are obviously threatened by the widespread popularity of the protests, which have been both effective and everywhere.” Protesters have spoken up in all 50 states. “The map is finally all red, but not for the reason that Trump wants,” said Meyers. “This kind of massive, sustained political mobilization represents a direct threat to the unjust system of predatory policing we currently have, which is why the people who benefit from this system are lashing out so aggressively,” Meyers continued. “One after another, we’ve watched countless videos of local police departments arresting or violently attacking peaceful protesters, and reporters lawfully exercising their first amendment rights.” For example, cellphone video captured a Miami police officer shoving a woman with her hands up to the ground; the Miami Herald later found that that officer had been reviewed by police internal affairs for excessive force 79 times in three and a half years on the job. “Seventy-nine times in three and a half years – I haven’t used shampoo that much in the same time period,” said Meyers. “And granted, I probably should’ve, but how many times do you have to get in trouble before you get fired. No other job works like that! If a commercial airline pilot had been investigated 79 times for flying upside down and doing barrel rolls while hammered on Goldschläger, we wouldn’t be like, ‘All right, man, 80 strikes and you’re out!’” Stephen Colbert On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert marveled at the spread of the protests across America, noting that at least 430 cities and towns – from New York to Atlanta to Laramie, Wyoming, and Helena, Montana – have seen demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter. “These protests are uniting Americans of all backgrounds, because you may have noticed that Boise, Idaho, does not have a lot of black people. Neither does Laramie, Wyoming,” he said. “Please don’t buy the false narrative that these are lawless mobs,” Colbert added. “The vast majority of these protests have been peaceful. And you might not know that if you watch cable news, because to the news, peace is boring. That’s why CNN just launched their sister network: the Burning Trash Can Channel.” Meanwhile, tensions have been escalated by police enforcing curfews in cities across the nation, from New York to Los Angeles. “The point of a curfew is to stop lawbreakers from taking advantage of protests, but in some cities, protesters are getting swept up by cops in curfews starting as early as 6pm,” Colbert explained, as police use curfew “as an excuse to bring the smackdown on peaceful protesters”. Colbert also touched on Mattis’s public denunciation of Trump, which he called “especially surprising” because Mattis’s parting words were: “I will not speak ill of a sitting president.” “Evidently, he will speak ill of a president sitting on a bed covered in cold curly fries,” said Colbert. Jimmy Kimmel “Protests are continuing nationwide,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, and in Washington, “where law enforcement has taken a much more forceful approach, including teargassing peaceful protesters, things are not as amicable. “Authorities there are busy erecting another fence that will go around the existing White House fence, which will make two fences.“ Kimmel continued. “So it looks like Trump is finally getting his wall built after all. How long before we find out Don Jr invested in a fence company?” Meanwhile, Kimmel dissected Trump’s tweet-response to Mattis’s “one-star Yelp review” which called Trump a threat to the constitution. Trump’s claim that he nicknamed Mattis Mad Dog is an outright lie, given that he has been called that for many years prior to his work in the administration. “What a strange thing to lie about – it’s so easily disproved!” Finally, a Twitter user experimented with posting Trump’s tweets, verbatim, to see if they would be blocked for inciting violence. They were indeed blocked by the platform, while Trump’s exact same tweets went unmarked. Which made Kimmel wonder if “maybe Twitter has a way of determining who is and isn’t a threat based on how tiny the person who tweeted’s thumbs are”.