Jimmy Kimmel on Epstein files congressional vote: ‘Make no mistake – this isn’t over’
Late-night hosts celebrated the congressional votes to release the Epstein files and decried Donald Trump’s warm meeting with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.Tuesday was “a very big day” in Washington DC, said Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday evening, as both the House and Senate voted near unanimously to authorize the justice department to release investigative files related to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.“Ultimately even [speaker] Mike Johnson voted yes on releasing the files,” Kimmel noted, meaning that the bill now heads to the White House, where it will probably66 be signed by Trump.“The goal was to have the bill pass by such a large margin that Trump can’t put his little orange thumb on the scale and give it the old Cheeto veto,” he explained.“But make no mistake: this isn’t over.
He’s not giving up.If anyone thinks he’s going to release all of the Epstein files, I’ve got a beautiful East Wing of the White House to sell you.”That’s because even after the vote, “Trump cronies” in the justice department still have the power to withhold information to “protect ongoing investigations, protect innocent people or for reasons of national security”.“But they would never do anything like that, would they?” Kimmel joked.“They’re sworn to protect the constitution of the United States!“Something is fishy,” he added.
“Trump rolled over faster than that dog Ghislaine Maxwell gets to play with in her country club prison.”On that note: “It is amazing the kind of special treatment you get when half of the most powerful people from the last 30 years don’t want to see you testifying in court.”“When it comes to Congress, it’s increasingly rare that things happen,” said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show.Which made Tuesday, when the House voted 427-1 to release the Epstein files, all the more notable.The measure then headed to the Senate, which passed it unanimously overnight, after the Late Show taping.
“Tomorrow, we might know everything he and his pervert buddies did,” said Colbert.“Meaning it’s Epstein Rockin’ Eve – stay up for a ball drop you’re gonna want to miss.”The vote marked “a huge loss for Trump, make no mistake”, he continued.“For going on four months now, Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson fought the release of the Epstein files with every congressional tool they had, and keep in mind: Congress is loaded with some major tools.”“But when it looked like Republicans were defecting en masse and they were going to lose big, they were suddenly all in, like they always were – right, Mike?”Colbert then played a clip of Johnson claiming that “Republicans support maximum transparency.
We always have,The president of the United States supports maximum transparency,”“Yes, the president has always supported maximum transparency, a healthy diet of leafy greens and the understated androgynous sensuality of a flat-chested woman,” Colbert mocked,“The president would be here, but he can’t talk right now as he’s jogging to Bible study,”Colbert also criticized Trump’s chummy White House visit with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
And when a reporter brought up the murder of the journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi, which US intelligence concluded was authorized by the crown prince, Trump reacted angrily.“Things happen, but he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that,” he said.“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”“Yes, how dare you embarrass our guest!” Colbert mocked.“Now he’s going to feel all self-conscious when he tries to chop up somebody like you.
”And on Late Night, Seth Meyers returned to a meeting earlier this month between Trump and representatives from Switzerland, in which they gifted the president a special Rolex desktop clock and a 1kg personalized gold bar.“So now foreign officials are just openly giving him gold?” he wondered.“Trump’s turning into a live-action political cartoon.Next time, someone’s going to give him a big sack with a dollar sign on it.”In a new interview with a British rightwing news channel, Trump said that people will ask him: “What do you recommend for growing your children?”“I don’t know if I want advice on raising children from someone who doesn’t even know it’s called ‘raising children’,” Meyers said, laughing.
In the same interview, Trump said: “I’ve never had a drink in my life, and I don’t take drugs.”“Maybe one of the best endorsements I’ve ever heard for drinking and doing drugs,” Meyers quipped.
UK government borrows more than expected in setback before budget
The UK government borrowed more than expected in October, official figures show, in the final snapshot of the public finances before Rachel Reeves’s crunch budget.The Office for National Statistics said the government borrowed £17.4bn last month. That was lower than the same month last year, but still marked the third highest October deficit in the public finances on record. It is also higher than the £15bn City economists had forecast
AI bubble fears return as Wall Street falls back from short-lived rally
Fears of a growing bubble around the artificial intelligence frenzy resurfaced on Thursday as leading US stock markets fell, less than 24 hours after strong results from chipmaker Nvidia sparked a rally.Wall Street initially rose after Nvidia, the world’s largest public company, reassured investors of strong demand for its advanced data center chips. But the relief dissipated, and technology stocks at the heart of the AI boom came under pressure.The benchmark S&P 500 closed down 1.6%, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0
French authorities investigate alleged Holocaust denial posts on Elon Musk’s Grok AI
French public prosecutors are investigating allegations by government ministers and human rights groups that Grok, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, made statements denying the Holocaust.The Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday night it was expanding an existing inquiry into Musk’s social media platform, X, to include the “Holocaust-denying comments”, which remained online for three days.Beneath a now-deleted post by a convicted French Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi militant, Grok on Monday advanced several false claims commonly made by people who deny Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews during the second world war.The chatbot said in French that the gas chambers at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau were “designed for disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus, featuring ventilation systems suited for this purpose, rather than for mass executions”.It claimed the “narrative” that the chambers were used for “repeated homicidal gassings” persisted “due to laws suppressing reassessment, a one-sided education and a cultural taboo that discourages the critical examination of evidence”
‘We excel at every phase of AI’: Nvidia CEO quells Wall Street fears of AI bubble amid market selloff
Global share markets rose after Nvidia posted third-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates, assuaging for now concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms had peaked.On Wednesday, all eyes were on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry and the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, with analysts and investors hoping the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings would dampen fears that a bubble was forming in the sector.Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, opened the earnings call with an attempt to dispel those concerns, saying that there was a major transformation happening in AI, and Nvidia was foundational to that transformation.“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” said Huang. “From our vantage point, we see something very different
Jessie Diggins, trailblazing star of cross-country skiing, to retire at end of season
Jessie Diggins, the most decorated American cross-country skier of all time, has revealed that she will retire at the end of the season, calling time on a 15-year career that redefined what US athletes could achieve in a sport long dominated by European nations.Diggins will race the full World Cup calendar and compete in her fourth Olympics at Milano-Cortina before finishing her career on home snow at the World Cup finals in Lake Placid. She announces her departure as the world’s No 1-ranked skier, the owner of three overall World Cup titles and three distance globes, and a four-time Olympic medalist – including the famous 2018 team sprint gold she won with Kikkan Randall that marked the first Olympic title in US cross-country skiing history.“It’s time to open the next chapter of my life and it’s going to be filled with so many things,” she said Thursday in a Zoom call from Finland, where she is preparing for the season opener. “I’ve been working very, very hard for a very long time and I love what I do and I love this team … but it’s time to open the next chapter of my life
Cadillac copy Nasa playbook to build F1 team from scratch to hit Melbourne startline
Twelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as Formula One’s newest entry for 2026. Building the team from scratch has entailed a frenetic work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 descends on Vegas this weekend, Cadillac know time is getting tight.At the final race of the season to be staged in the United Statess, with just over 100 days to go before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, joined the nascent operation in March 2023 shortly after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry
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