Missed Monday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
We Leave You Alone for Two Weeks…
With most of the late-night hosts (and LateNighter’s Monologues Round-Ups) returning after a two-week vacation, the general mood of Monday’s monologues was essentially the meme of Community‘s Troy Barnes returning with pizzas only to see everything in flaming, panicky chaos. Debate chaos. Democrats in disarray chaos. Trump unveiling a detailed plan to turn America into a Christo-fascist hellscape chaos. Farcical third-party candidate fending off dog-eating rumors chaos. It’s a lot of chaos to catch up on, is what we’re saying.
As Seth Meyers put it after a montage of all the things he missed while on vacation, “Oh no, I came back to the wrong timeline!” Sadly for him, the multiverse remains theoretical and this is the jackass reality we’re stuck with, as Meyers and his colleagues in late night tackled the Herculean task of shaping all that fetid overflow of bad, crazy, and bad-crazy news into something resembling comedy. Let’s dive in.
Not the Master Debater
Jon Stewart had a head start in analyzing the first presidential debate, having primal-screamed and unsuccessfully Hulked his way through a live post-debate show on the night. If anything, The Daily Show host came back even more fired up over President Joe Biden’s alarmingly feeble TV performance against a guy whose penchant for sexual assault, convicted criminality, and the occasional full-on coup against democracy should have made for easy pickings. It’s a testy topic for late-night comics—all of whom are avowedly anti-Trump—to tackle, especially since the media conversation since debate night has almost exclusively centered on Biden’s fitness, leading to claims of a repeat of suspiciously distractible “But her emails” 2016 punditry. If there’s one takeaway from Monday’s monologues, it’s that everyone involved passed the test of basing their jokes on unflinching honesty—which often made for some uncomfortable laughter from viewers. So said Stewart, “All we want is for someone to keep it 100. The percentage, not the age.”
When it came to the debate, the question seemed to be whether the 81-year-old Biden’s gaffes while articulating a stable, humane vision for the country outweighed the 78-year-old Donald Trump’s lies while ranting about his plan for a literal dictatorship based on bigotry, authoritarianism, and unfettered greed. As Election Day looms in 119 short days, late-night hosts are staking out their respective comic territory. Even Jimmy Kimmel Live celebrity substitute host Kathryn Hahn got in on the action. Addressing the Democratic lawmakers urging Biden to drop out, the Agatha All Along star noted, “Democrats in Congress are reportedly trying to find the best way for Biden to move forward. Which is probably with one of those walkers with the tennis balls on the bottom of them.”
[On announced plans to not schedule events after 8 p.m.] “Your plan to calm fear about his age is an earlier bedtime? Are you hoping that we’ll forget he’s 81 if you treat him like he’s five and a half?”
seth meyers
[On the Biden campaign selling a pre-debate drink jokingly claiming to be what Biden would be hopped up on] “Whatever is in Dark Brandon Secret Sauce, evidently, Joe Biden chose to drink it out of that chalice from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He chose poorly.”
Stephen colbert
[On Biden’s oft-captured debate face] “Why is your mouth open? If you were at a carnival, a 12-year-old would try to shoot water into it.”
seth meyers
“I think Biden debates as well as about Lincoln… if you dug him up right now.”
stephen colbert
“If I had to describe President Biden’s performance in fireworks terms, he was either the one that doesn’t ignite or the one where the bottle tips over and blows up your house.”
jimmy fallon
[On Biden’s debate pallor] “You work for Joe Biden, why do you even own pale makeup? He’s already an 81-year-old Irishman, he’s f**king translucent.”
stephen colbert
[Addressing the administration’s post-debate excuses] “Rather than respecting the American people and having an honest, at least partial conversation about what we had all seen, we were told immediately, ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for.'”
jon stewart
[Same] “I hate those summer colds, where your voice gets hoarse and your brain explodes.”
stephen colbert
“The difference is this. Trump delivered at the debate to expectation. We expect him to be f**king crazy.”
jon stewart
“Going into it, all Joe had to do was to allay people’s fears that he was too old. But instead, Biden’s shakiness allowed Trump to get away with 90 minutes of lies, racism, and weird golf brags.”
stephen colbert
Cleaning Up the Cleanup
In an attempt to quell the wave of anxiety and doubt among supporters following the debate, President Biden sat down for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It was… better? Still, hosts had some residual questions about the President’s answers, especially when it came to Biden explaining that, if he winds up losing, he’d be satisfied that he gave saving American democracy the good old college try.
“No! That’s not what this is about. ‘Giving it your all’ is what salsa lessons at a retirement home is all about.”
seth meyers
“Actually I don’t think that’s ‘what this is about.’ I think thats what The Karate Kid was about.”
stephen colbert
“That’s not what this is about! There are no participation trophies in end-game democracy. I remember FDR saying, ‘Well, if the Nazis take over Europe, at least both teams had fun.'”
jon stewart
“This isn’t about how you feel, this is about how voters feel. If you truly believe that American democracy is at stake—and it is—then you have to act like it. You can’t claim to be the last bulwark against fascism and also have a ‘more sleep’ plan.”
seth meyers
[On Biden’s claim that his debate was merely a “bad episode”] “Wrong! When Grey’s Anatomy did a musical, that was a bad episode. This took a year off my life.”
stephen colbert
Should He Stay Or Should He Go?
In the end, most hosts acquitted themselves ably. They held their obvious favorite’s feet to the fire, made plenty of wounding jokes about Joe Biden’s ability to beat the candidate openly calling for an end to America as we know it, and, in Stephen Colbert’s case, even momentarily fled the scene after one particularly alarming Biden miscue clip. So the question is, are Biden-supporting late-night hosts calling for Biden to leave the race just four months before the most consequential election ever?
Some sidled up awfully close, even as they uniformly stressed how utterly loathsome Donald Trump and his plans for America are. Even Colbert, prefacing his monologue with a heartfelt endorsement of the job that Biden has done, concluded with what sounded very much like a wish that his President would step aside. “Self-sacrifice take a particular kind of courage,” Colbert stated to his rapt audience, “And that is a courage I believe Joe Biden is capable of. I believe he’s a good enough man, he’s a good enough President to put the needs of the country ahead of the needs of his ego.” Meanwhile, Stewart was blunter, noting, “An arthritic status quo unable or unwilling to respond in any way to the concerns of voters who just received new and urgent information about their candidate also erodes confidence and faith in the system of government.” Either way, it’s going to be a bumpy four months.
[On Biden supporters accusing the “drop out” crowd of being “bedwetters”] “First of all, I’m not sure incontinence is the metaphor you want to go with.”
jon stewart
“A growing number of Democrats want Biden to drop out. If he doesn’t, their only plan is to tie a bunch of balloons to the White House and hope he floats away like the old guy from Up.”
jimmy fallon
“Biden had a bad debate performance and Democrats are having a vigorous back and forth over whether he should stay in. Donald Trump fomented a violent coup attempt and was convicted of 34 felony counts and not only did every Republican immediately fall in line, they showed up at the courthouse in matching suits like they were flight attendants on MAGA Airlines.”
seth meyers
“The media has spent almost two weeks calling on a candidate to drop out of the race and somehow it’s not the convicted felon.”
jimmy fallon
“Okay, here’s the thing. I would vote for a skeleton over Donald Trump. In fact, I may literally be voting for a skeleton over Donald Trump.”
kathryn Hahn
“Some high-profile Democrats like Rob Reiner and Stephen King also want Biden to drop out. You know things are bad when the guys behind Stand By Me won’t stand by you.”
jimmy fallon
[On the logistics of choosing a new nominee] “Four months is for-f**king-ever. Britain just held and election in two months. France had two in one month, defeated fascism, and still had time to have an affair with Denmark.”
jon stewart
“Biden’s brushing everyone off. He’s like, ‘People have been telling me not to run for President since 1988. I think I know what I’m doing.'”
jimmy fallon
Project 2025? Never Heard of Her
The Republican Party’s plan for a truly terrifying future of white supremacy, fundamentalist bigotry, censorship, sweeping social service cuts, and consolidation of power in the hands of a SCOTUS-anointed dictator is called Project 2025. Cobbled together from the right-wing Heritage Society’s most fevered dreams of a white supremacist dystopia ruled by Donald Trump, the gist of Project 2025 was summed up by Heritage head Kevin Roberts last week, who, in the language of serial abusers everywhere, told an interviewer, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless ― if the left allows it to be.”
Seth Meyers picked up on the whole creepy “we’re gong to murder anybody we don’t like” vibe of Project 2025, even as Donald Trump—whose closest advisers are hip-deep in writing the 900-page blueprint for full-throated authoritarianism—sheepishly backed away from the thing once polls started showing that most Americans would rather not live in a hateful right-wing hellscape, thanks very much.
“That’s right, they’re fighting a second American Revolution to outlaw abortion, make Trump a dictator, and ban pornography. It’s just like the first American Revolution, when Nathan Hale famously said, ‘I only regret that I have the one lifetime subscription to Ye Olde Jugs magazine. Which, to clarify, was just about regular jugs.”
seth meyers
[On one of Project 2025’s many censorship goals] “The only way you could get Trump to read about a plan to ban pornography is if you hid it inside some pornography.”
seth meyers
“His aides are involved and his super PAC is running ads on it. The only way Trump could be any more directly linked to Project 2025 is if he sold it as a companion piece with his bibles.”
seth meyers
[On Trump’s transparently false social media denial that he’s ever heard of Project 2025, ending with, “I wish them well”] “It’s like in WWII when Churchill famously said, ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the seas, we shall hope the best man wins.'”
seth meyers
“I’d hate to see Trump in a monster movie. ‘Godzilla, he’s rampaging through the city, destroying buildings—he’s killing our citizens and we wish him luck.”
seth meyers
Potpourri
[On the Fourth of July] “There’s nothing like watching a fireworks show and then watching your uncles high-three each other.”
jimmy fallon
[On Robert F. Kennedy Jr trying to explain that picture of him supposedly eating a barbecued dog] “The bar for campaign promises has really been lowered. It used to be stuff like, ‘I will safeguard Social Security,’ or ‘I will create jobs.’ Now we’re down to, ‘I won’t eat you.'”
seth meyers
“Biden ran against Dean Phillips. That’s not even a real person That’s a stock photo on the package for a garden hose.”
jon stewart
“This might be the first presidential race where a slick bathtub could alter the course of history.”
kathryn Hahn
[On Chipotle’s Olympic-themed, gold-wrapped burritos] “Its pretty nuch a reverse Olympics. First you get the gold, then you do the 100-meter dash to the bathroom.”
jimmy fallon
[On reports that a robot committed suicide by hurling itself down some stairs] “He control-alt-deleted himself.”
Kathryn Hahn
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