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Late-Night TV Goes to Town on Trump’s ‘Jedi’ Declassification

Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and more had an absolute field day with Donald Trump’s claim that he can declassify things just by “thinking about it.”

Sometimes a Donald Trump story comes along that is so dumb, every late-night comedy host can’t help but make way too many jokes about it. This Thursday was one of those nights. After Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week that, as president, he had the power to declassify documents just by “thinking about it,” the late-night pile-on came fast and furious.

First out of the gate was The Daily Show host Trevor Noah, who expressed deep skepticism that Trump could “declassify documents with his brain” when he couldn’t even “read documents with his brain.” He predicted that Trump would “plead Jedi” at the eventual trial and joked that it would “be the first time in his life that Trump has thought something and not said it out loud.”

Seth Meyers used his “A Closer Look” segment to argue that Trump’s claim is a “shaky defense” because it requires you to believe that he’s capable of “thinking” at all. “I mean, even if it was true that the law said you could declassify something just by thinking about it, all a judge would have to do is look into Trump’s eyes and immediately rule that there’s just nothing going on in there.”

Over on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel took aim at Hannity for failing to follow up on the ridiculous claim. “His approach was basically, ‘Show me on the doll where the FBI investigated you,” he said. “I mean you have to hand it to Sean. When life gives him felons, he makes felon-ade!”

“If Trump actually had the power to change things just by thinking about them, Don Jr. would have turned into a Big Mac 30 years ago,” he joked. “And by the way, even if he did have the power to declassify this information, it doesn’t matter. It’s illegal for him to take any presidential records from the White House without permission.”

And on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump for using his “mind” to “make more dumb words come out of his stupid mouth,” before showing the clip of the former president insisting that he declassified “everything.”

“OK, I’ll hop on that crazy train,” Colbert added. “Let’s say he telepathically declassified everything, like he was wearing a treason Cerebro. That means he thinks it’s a good idea, somehow, for everyone to know foreign nuclear secrets and, somehow, getting all the names of America’s undercover spies out there. How is that better?”

Even Jimmy Fallon got in on the action, playing the clip and then joking, “Hannity was like, ‘Oh, I get it, you’re going to plead insanity.’”

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Matt WilsteinSenior Editor

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