Trevor Noah on the VP debate: Pence dodged questions 'like they were a PG-13 movie'

Trevor Noah

Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate bore the marks of a pandemic now tearing through the White House, with two plexiglass barriers separating the candidates on stage. But “once you got past the whole plague thing, the debate itself was actually pretty normal”, said Trevor Noah on Thursday’s Daily Show. “It was kind of like a throwback to what campaigns used to be like, before Donald Trump arrived on the scene and turned every political event into a monster truck rally on cocaine.”

Pence, like the president, refused to abide by debate rules on timed answers; Noah played a montage of clips in which the moderator, Susan Page, ineffectually attempted to cut the vice president off on several occasions. Which begged the question: what is the point of a moderator? “Like, what is their job?” Noah wondered. “Because it’s not cutting off the candidates. And it’s definitely not holding them accountable for what they say.” Anyone could say anything without factchecking on-site, he added. “In fact, most of the lies you could pre-factcheck, because these people use the same lies over and over again.

“You don’t even have to wait for them to say it! The moderator could just be like, ‘Uh, this next question is about healthcare, and Mike Pence please don’t say you and Trump have a plan to protect pre-existing conditions because we all know that’s BS.’”

Related: Stephen Colbert on Mike Pence: 'So full of crap he’s attracting flies'

While Harris avoided answering a question about expanding the supreme court, Pence dodged questions all evening “like they were a PG-13 movie”, Noah joked. To be fair, “defending Donald Trump is like trying to sell a house that is currently on fire”.

But the highlight was, of course, the fly which landed on Pence’s head and lit up social media. “What was crazy was how long it sat there for,” Noah said, as the fly perched for over two minutes without Pence noticing. “Even Trump was watching at home like, ‘Wow, two minutes with Mike Pence, I could never do that. We’ve got to get that fly to White House – such a powerful, strong fly.’”

Stephen Colbert

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped Thursday’s head-snapping back-and-forth on debates following the Covid outbreak at the White House. First, the commission on presidential debates announced that next week’s town hall would go virtual. Then Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, who also contracted Covid in the White House outbreak, objected to the modification because Trump “will have posted multiple negative tests prior to the debate”.

“That’s not how any of this works,” Colbert responded. “You can’t put all your faith in something that might happen down the line, when the potential consequence is death. That’s like saying, ‘Look, I know your parachute isn’t working now, but I have full confidence that we’ll get it up and running before we reach terminal velocity.’”

Trump himself then called into Fox Business and pulled out of the debate, saying: “I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate.”

“Yes, Trump’s time is ‘very precious’, he said while calling Fox Business in the middle of a deadly plague,” Colbert deadpanned.

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers ran through the headlines from a week somehow more insane than usual for Trump’s Washington. Since his release from Walter Reed medical center on Monday, Trump has “been on a combination of powerful steroids and experimental drugs while frying his brain with hours of cable news – so, exactly what you want from the guy in charge of the nuclear arsenal”, Meyers deadpanned.

And on Thursday, Trump called Fox Business for “yet another one of his televised therapy sessions” with Maria Bartiromo, “where he once again rambled incoherently about honestly God knows what – it’s impossible to follow unless you’re deeply immersed in the Fox News cinematic universe of gripes and conspiracy theories”, Meyers said.

“Basically, it was just two crazy people yelling over the phone like divorced parents FaceTiming each other on Thanksgiving.” During the hourlong call, Trump refused to attend a virtual debate, ranted about indicting political rivals, fear-mongered about ballots in a river, and proclaimed himself a “perfect physical specimen” that people want to hug.

In other words, listening to the interview was like “taking a bunch of your racist uncle’s Facebook posts and putting them in a blender”, Meyers said.

And that’s not even getting to half of the developments in the last week, especially as a Covid outbreak at the White House has infected at least 34 staffers and probably exposed thousands more, thanks to Trump’s busy, mask-less schedule. Meyers offered a shocking yet still incomplete summary: “The White House is emptier than an abandoned Hollywood video after Covid outbreak infected the president and his aides and exposed potentially thousands of others, cases are one again on the rise while just three states reported declines, the president scream-tweeted that he was unilaterally ending the stimulus talks then reversed himself, some of the country’s senior military leadership including members of the joint chiefs are in quarantine, raccoons have taken over the White House, and staffers have to wear masks and gowns and face shields to enter the Oval Office like they’re performing an autopsy at Area 51.

“Or, as the president put it,” in one of his videos meant to hype supporters this week: “We have enthusiasm like probably nobody has ever had.”