Venezuela, Panties, and More: How Late Night Unpacked a Momentous Holiday Break

The holiday season is a time for family, for fun, for forgetting all the worries of the world.

But for anyone who got lost in that fog of merriment and cocktails, the truth-tellers of late-night television returned on Monday to their now-exalted role as reportorial shock jocks, ready to deliver sharp slaps of reality, leavened with a lot of laughs, to audiences already gobsmacked by momentous developments in the very first days of 2026.

We took over Venezuela? What???

Of course, the armed kidnapping (President Donald Trump’s own description) of that country’s leader and the usurpation of his power has been all over the news since this past Saturday. But in what seems to be increasingly the remit of the comics who haunt the late hours of TV as well as Trump’s sensitivities, what’s going on in this nation really starts to sink in when Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert et al deliver some context.

Like: “I’m talking about the former President of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, who was reverse-ICE’d and imported to a jail in Brooklyn.” (Stewart)

And: “You know what this means? Those Epstein Files must be crazy! ‘Bomb something!!!’” (Colbert)

And: “Trump decided Maduro had to go. And yes, he’s a criminal and a dictator and he’s driven his country into financial ruin while he and his family have lined their own pockets. But Maduro is no saint, either.” (Kimmel)

The fearless and funny but utterly committed campaign of comic resistance to the activities of the Trump White House returned from a holiday hiatus with almost too much to say.

There was plenty of material to choose from, though the pull of covering the toppling a different country’s leader—under the banner of a “Donroe Doctrine”—was an irresistible  comedy set-up, and predictably dominated the Monday monologues.

“Donald Trump did so much crazy stuff over the last two weeks, it would take a nine-part Ken Burns documentary series to cover it all… but I’m going to do my best to boil it down.” —Jimmy Kimmel

Only Kimmel tried to augment that current head-scratching headline with a brief overview of all the other outrages and peculiarities that late-night missed the past two weeks:

The disastrous ratings for Trump’s hosting of the annual ceremony at the also-usurped Kennedy Center; his cringey public celebration of his wife’s undergarments; the stupefying 556 social media posts from Trump over those weeks (“the ramblings of a mad man,” as Kimmel put it); and his absurd exchanges with kids calling the White House to follow Santa on Christmas Eve, featuring his bizarre bragging to 10-year-olds about how much he won their states by. (“How much affirmation does this man need?”) 

There was really far too much ground to cover. And Kimmel inevitably left out other mindless or mean-spirited moments, like Trump’s public message blasting the history of the Kennedy family the same day a young member of that family, Caroline Kennedy’s daughter Tatiana, died of brain cancer. (No possible joke could ever have been worked around that tragedy, though Trump’s garish insensitivity might have merited a mention the day it happened.)

Based on recency and ringing the astonishing bell so loudly, Venezuela forced its way to the top.

All the hosts, including Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, covered the oil-y motivation behind the “kinetic military strike” on Venezuela, and Trump’s happy acknowledgement that it really wasn’t much about that drug-running business after all. They also all featured videos of Maduro dancing with slightly better moves than Trump’s frozen-legged gyrations to “YMCA,” and how that provided personal inspiration for Trump to put an end to that.

In other words, context. Yes, some of that ekes out on newscasts because what’s going on in the country is inherently absurdist comedy. But no other media outlets are stepping up the way late-night shows are.

Kimmel added a special touch. He went and took the actual cognitive test that Trump has repeatedly bragged he has “aced.” The one he has said is really tough.

That was genuinely a newsy move. Could have been done elsewhere. And done straight, not for laughs. Kimmel added jokes, but the overall effect was telling: A simple test with a few memory questions and some identity questions, like determining which is picture of a rhino and which is a picture of a camel.

Naturally, a much younger man like Kimmel easily could actually “ace” the simple test. But it provided insight into Trump’s empty boasting about how great he has done on this very simple little quiz. And it set up a question for real news reporters to follow up on: Why are they giving Trump this test over and over?

After the weeks of news that was all grim and foreboding, there was definitely comfort in getting back to comedy context. And a measure of psychic satisfaction, like going back to your therapist after August vacation is over.

Yes, there was satire, and some big laughs. Those feel good. But there was more to it.

An element of “What the hell is going on?” and “Why aren’t more alarm bells going off?” pervades the late-night commentary, leaving high anxiety to trouble your sleep.

Stewart was especially funny. As has become a signature for him, with the shift into an op-ed style opinion essay, he spared no words for the American condition as he sees it at this moment in history.

“This is all exhausting,” Stewart said, capturing the mood of millions for sure, “and exposes the Gulf of America—not the body of water. The real Gulf of America is the gap between the high aspirations that embody the founding of this country and the thuggish gangsterism that this crew thinks makes us great again.” 

We’re back.