Late-night hosts were practically obligated on Thursday to spend time discussing fired FBI Director James Comey's testimony in front of the Senate intelligence committee.
"The Daily Show" host Trevor Noah was not let down by the hearing, but he pointed out that most of the good stuff would later be discussed in a closed session, out of the public light until someone leaks something to the press.
"Why the hell are we watching?" Noah asked his audience after Comey's testimony. "I feel like we came out of this testimony with more questions than answers."
"Today's hearing was cool and everything but basically it was like listening to a clean version of a hip hop song," the comedian added. "Full lyrics available in the close session."
One moment from the hearing that Noah singled out was when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Comey whether he personally believed President Trump obstructed justice. Comey said he could not answer that in an open setting.
"This is why white people always die in movies. 'I was getting a bad feeling about this and I stayed to investigate further,'" Noah joked. "If you had a black FBI director, after his first meeting with Trump, he would have been like, 'Oh, hell no. This is some obstruction shit, yo. This is some obstruction shit.'"
"Come on, Comey. We didn't come here to appropriately see you differentiate your investigative role from the legally separate role of prosecutorial judgment," Noah added.
Stephen Colbert, the "Late Show" host, dedicated most of his monologue to the Comey testimony.
"Comey opened his testimony by talking about why he thinks he lost his job," Colbert explained to his audience Thursday. He then showed a clip of Comey saying that he served at the pleasure of the president.
"And then when I read the Russian dossier and saw what gives president pleasure and I was like, 'Oh, no,' Colbert joked.
Later in his monologue, Colbert highlighted the part of Comey's testimony when he said that he was surprised by Trump's original reason for firing him — that he behaved improperly during the Hillary Clinton investigation. Comey said that he felt the water had gone under the bridge at that point, so that justification did not make sense.
"Oh, I remember that bridge," Colbert said. "It was the one they threw Hillary off of to see if she is a witch."
"Late Night" host Seth Meyers used his "Closer Look" segment to dissect the Comey hearing.
The political comedian noted right away that Comey felt the need to document all of his conversations with Trump.
"That's the FBI director," Meyers said, "A guy who dealt with liars and criminals his whole life. Who walked out of his first meeting with the president, thinking, 'I need to write this shit down.'"
Later in the segment, Meyers brought up that Trump had called Comey one day to explicitly tell him he was not involved with Russian hookers as alleged in the Steele dossier.
"Could you imagine any other president saying that?" Meyers said. "And yet it is barely shrug inducing. You are almost surprised Trump didn't never threw in another country. 'I had nothing to do with hooks in Russia or Thailand.'"
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