"Even when you get fired from Dominos, the manager takes you into that crappy little office and tells you to your face."
Late-night hosts wasted no time in poking fun at former
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's firing Tuesday by President
Donald Trump over Twitter. Tillerson was ousted barely four hours after he returned from an Africa mission and with no face-to-face conversation with the president
On Late Night With
Seth Meyers, the host clarified Tillerson's social media ouster. "Well, technically, it was a retweet,” said Meyers, showing an image of a fictionalized tweet by Russian president Vladimir Putin saying, “You’re Fired, Rex.”
Later, in his "Couple Things" segment, Meyers took further issue with how Trump let Tillerson go. "Even when you get fired from Dominos, the manager takes you into that crappy little office and tells you to your face," the host said. "Tweets are for finding out which band is in town or which airline was mean to Chrissy Teigen.”
In ways of offering an explanation as to why Tillerson was dismissed, Meyers compared the move to 1980s college comedies. “If the White House is a fraternity house in an 80s movie, Tillerson was the dean, and the dean never wins in an 80s movie,” the host quipped.
Over on The Daily Show, host
Trevor Noah noted it was lucky that Tillerson was tipped off about the news of his firing before the information got out while he was in Africa. "Imagine if this happened and he wasn't warned. He could have been in the middle of negotiations in Africa and African leadership could have found out before him," said Noah. "He could've been like, 'I'm here to tell you what America requires,' and they could've been like, 'I'm here to tell you to suck my dick.' "
On
The Late Show,
Stephen Colbert joked about the way that Trump phrased Tillerson's dismissal (and former CIA head Mike Pompeo's subsequent hiring) on Twitter, saying, "Congratulations to all!"
"Wait, congratulations to all? 'Congratulations Rex, you've won an all-expenses paid trip to beautiful Get the Fuck Out of Here,'" Colbert said. "As a parting gift we got you this beautiful door, which we hope does not hit you on the ass."
Colbert subsequently poked fun at Trump's method for delivering bad news to a person he had worked closely with for the past year. "It's too bad Twitter wasn't around when Trump entered his first two marriages," Colbert said, "Back then he had to do it by fax." A picture of a fax machine printing a paper with the words "Sorry, you're a seven at best" scrawled over it then filled the screen.
Jimmy Kimmel reminded viewers of Live! that the tweeted firing was especially odd given that Trump has a lot of experience firing people in person from his days on The Apprentice. "Donald Trump spent more time firing Lil Jon than he did firing the Secretary of State," Kimmel joked. He added: "I’m starting to think he fires people - just so he can get a piece of going-away cake at the party."
Conan O'Brien, meanwhile, poked fun at Trump's nomination process. "President Trump fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Twitter. It makes sense when you consider that Trump hired Tillerson on Tinder," O'Brien said.
Then O'Brien took a jab at former White House political aide Omarosa Manigault, who recently gossiped about the White House to her roommate on the show Big Brother, where she was a contestant for a few episodes: "Rex Tillerson reportedly doesn’t know why he was fired. At least, that's according to Tillerson's roommates, Sean Spicer and Omarosa," he said.