Jimmy Kimmel: 'How do you finish a wall you haven’t started building yet?'

Late-night hosts recapped real-world and chant-world developments, from a tentative budget deal to “finish that wall”.

Jimmy Kimmel: ‘Refunds so tiny they fit in Trump’s hand’

Jimmy Kimmel called BS on some of Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed victories on Tuesday, starting with the landmark tax bill from 2017, which is taking heat on social media as people file their taxes.

“Most people thought the big Trump tax cut was going cut their taxes,” Kimmel said, but “it turns out that the reason it was called the Trump tax cuts is because it only cut taxes for Trump, specifically”.

According to the IRS, Kimmel continued, the average refund check is down 8% this year, prompting many people to blast the law on Twitter under the hashtag #GOPtaxscam.

“They’re saying some of these refunds are so tiny that they even fit in Donald Trump’s hand,” Kimmel joked.

In other news, Congress announced a bipartisan agreement to keep the government functioning while allocating $1.375bn for “border security” â€" $200m less than the deal Trump refused in December, and far less than the $5.7bn he has demanded. Now, “it’s up to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter to decide if the president will sign it”, Kimmel said. Trump seemed unmoved by the deal, instead leading a rally of his supporters in El Paso, Texas, in a modified chant of “finish the wall”.

Hold up, Kimmel said. “How do you finish a wall you haven’t even started building yet?”

Several weeks ago, Kimmel continued, he joked that the president should just lie and say he is building the wall because supporters would believe him; they’re not going to check its progress in person.

As it turns out, “that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s skipped from ‘build the wall’ to ‘finish the wall’. That’s how Orwellian this has become,” Kimmel said.

“We are one delusional rally away from: ‘Now that we’ve finished the wall, let’s paint the wall!’”

Trevor Noah: ‘He’d prefer to just get them riled up’

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah also contextualized the El Paso rally, in which Trump pandered to his Texas supporters and said he wasn’t interested in reading the budget agreement reached by a bipartisan committee.

That the president spurned a proposal to the keep the government open for a rally is not surprising, Noah said, but still “a pretty insane admission. President Trump is saying instead of getting informed and then passing that information on to his audience, he’d prefer to just get them riled up.”

Also on brand: remixing his chants based on fictional developments. At the El Paso rally, Trump modified his now-standard “build the wall” chant to “finish the wall”.

“Now we’re doing ‘finish the wall’?” Noah mused. “I don’t know how much actual work they’re doing on the border, but I guess in Trump’s chant world, they’re making a lot of progress.”

Noah offered some context: although no new miles of wall have been built under Trump, there has been upgrading of fencing into taller fencing.

In other words: “He’s solved the problem of smugglers who are determined to sneak drugs into America but are too lazy to buy a somewhat taller ladder.”

In sum, the El Paso Trump rally was a Trump rally, although we learned one new thing: “In addition to words, the president seems to struggle with numbers too,” Noah said in reference to the president’s claim that he’s 1-1 in elections and soon to be 2-0.

“Uh, that’s not how math works,” Noah said, “but at least now we know how Trump successfully negotiated negative $200m for his wall.”

Stephen Colbert: ‘Deal, arted’

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert was “feeling very TBD” about the bipartisan budget deal from Congress, which may or may not keep the government open at the end of the week.

“I will be conditionally impressed at some later date,” he said.

The new budget deal allocates $1.375bn for border security â€" less than the $1.6bn offered in a deal rejected by Trump in December, kicking off the longest government shutdown in American history â€" and represents some “A+ negotiating” by the president, Colbert observed. “Deal, arted.”

Naturally, the agreement has been trashed by conservative talking heads â€" Laura Ingraham called it “pathetic” and Sean Hannity said it’s “a garbage compromise” â€" and on Tuesday, “Trump agreed with those people who tell him what he agrees with”, Colbert said. But though the president said he’s not happy with the deal, he didn’t rule out signing it. Instead, Trump proposed funding a physical wall by diverting funds from “far less important areas”: in practice, areas such as disaster relief for California and Puerto Rico.

In translation: “Trump’s plan is to divert funds from actual disasters in order to prevent fictional ones,” Colbert said.