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.
Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a Metaphor for How We Got Here as a Nation!
Yes, stuff is flying over New Jersey. And no, it’s not planeloads of bachelor parties about to ruin upcoming weddings with ill-advised trips to Atlantic City. Well, not only that, as New Jerseyans have been posting blurry cellphone videos of strange, unidentifiable lights hovering in their skies.
Oh wait, what’s that? Commercially available drones are so ubiquitous and inexpensive that every second neighborhood weirdo routinely sends one to invade people’s privacy while the other half are actively filming bargain price crane shots for college dudes’ student films? Well regardless, the internet is abuzz over the supposed invasion by totally not mail-ordered flying plastic junk.”The internet,” as ever, consisting of the weirdos who aren’t currently using their drones to spy into women’s bedrooms, conspiracy clowns itching to blame anything they don’t understand on [immigrants/trans people/their neighbor Steve who called the cops on them that one time], and various politicians eager to get their face in front of thirsty news cameras.
Including, naturally, Donald Trump, who spent his busy pre-inauguration days this weekend fanning the fraudulent flames of suspicion and unfounded conspiratorial terror by holding a presser in which he assured the nation that, yup, it’s probably something super-secret that the Deep State is hiding from you. As Seth Meyers noted while debunking Trump’s posts hyping up this latest hot button distraction for credulous rubes and MAGA nutcases he’d prefer not look too closely into his ongoing coup, “I can’t believe we have another four years of this f**king drone.”
“Did anyone think we’d start selling drones at convenience stores in America and there wouldn’t come a day when people were screaming, ‘There’s too many goddamn drones!'”
seth meyers
[Re-introducing his segment Unseen Mysteries of the Hidden Secrets] “Follow me down the rabbit hole, because a rabbit flew a drone down there.”
Stephen colbert
“It’s just for New Yorkers, New Jersey is like that next-door neighbor with the beaded curtains and weird smells and exotic wildlife in his house. And you say, ‘Honey, I think the guy next door has goats in his apartment, listen.'”
seth meyers
“With so many unrelated drone sightings, Americans have reasonable questions. Where are they coming from? What are they doing up there? And will they interfere with the chemtrails that are turning our livestock bi-curious?”
stephen colbert
“Nobody knows where they come from or why they exist. It’s basically air-crypto.”
jimmy fallon
“We will have more on this story as we continue to learn nothing about it.”
stephen colbert
[On one witness breathlessly calling one UFO “a drone on steroids”] “All right, first of all, it’s New Jersey. Of course the drone is on steroids. Even the drone has to bulk up for beach season. That’s why the drone has been spotted with dumbbells and tanning oil.”
seth meyers
“Everyone’s annoyed about the drones. Right now the Chinese spy balloons are like, ‘Stay in your lane girl, stay in your lane.'”
Jimmy fallon
“This whole drone freak-out is turning us into prehistoric Neanderthals. Don’t let these people anywhere near the Thanksgiving Day parade next year. ‘Everyone take cover! The aliens are approaching!’ ‘Sir, that’s just the Charlie Brown balloon.’ ‘Oh sure, that’s what you want us to think! The aliens are trying to make contact, listen!’ [Charlie Brown teacher “wah-wah-wah” voice.]
seth meyers
“When last we met, these ominous sky visitors were being sighted all over New Jersey. But since then the drones have done what everyone in Jersey does, go somewhere else.”
stephen colbert
[On former GOP governor Larry Hogan (R-MD) jumping on the conspiracy train by presenting a video of the night sky… quickly identified as constellations] “Man, we really do need to increase funding to our schools. He saw stars in the sky and thought they were unidentified flying objects.Even worse, the objects were flying in a formation that resembled some kind of large dipper. You know what this means, they’re coming for our gravy!”
Seth Meyers
“Okay, fair enough. But that was not Hogan’s only sighting. He later posted, ‘Oh my God, there’s a giant ladle coming for me! And a smaller ladle too like pouring into the bigger one!'”
stephen colbert
“When asked about the drones, Marjorie Taylor Greene said the government is in control of them. I want to believe her but she said the same thing about the weather, the Super Bowl, and the return of the McRib.”
jimmy fallon
[On sitting GOP Representative Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) claiming that the drones are evidence of an Iranian “mothership” hovering unseen off the New Jersey coast] “First of all, I find it hard to believe that very high and qualified sources wanted to get this information out and said, ‘Give me the red phone, it’s time to call Jeff. What’s the number for the Keebler treehouse?'”
seth meyers
“But okay, sure, there’s an Iranian mothership off the coast of the Jersey Shore. Even worse, there was a plane playing a banner that said, ‘Death to America! And $3 Bud Lights Down at the Crab Shack.'”
seth meyers
“And I’m sorry, if there was a mothership off the coast of the United States close enough to launch a fleet of drones, I feel like we would see it, right? You know, based on the fact that we can see the drones. ‘The cloaking shields on the mothership are working well. The Americans can’t see us at all.’ ‘And just to check, we’re cloaking the drones too, right?’ ‘Ooooh, f**k, f**k, f**k!'”
seth meyers
[On U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) submitting a bill ordering law enforcement to shoot down the drones] “He wants local police to shoot at anything in the sky… in December. Santa, I hope you have a kevlar sleigh. And don’t forget to take the battery out of Rudolph’s nose.”
stephen colbert
[On Donald Trump (R-1939 Germany) using his position and influence to totally calm things down] “Now, the Pentagon quickly issued a statement debunking that theory, but that didn’t stop online wackos from running wild. And by online wackos, I of course mean the incoming president of the United States.”
seth meyers
[On Trump’s typically hasty social media post about the issue] “That post is so crazy we don’t even have time to dwell on the fact that he misspelled ‘drone’ and ‘shoot.'”
seth meyers
“President Biden addressed the drone issue today—aw, I’m just f**king with you. He was nowhere to be seen. For real, I’m sure they brought up drones to him in the morning briefing and he was just like, ‘Pass!'”
seth meyers
Make America Dead Again
Sadly, not all conspiracy idiocy simply involves easily debunked iPhone footage and the occasional, much more entertaining film of credulous people running into stuff while trying to capture a $50 toy’s erratic flight over Bayonne. Sometimes the unhinged and misinformed ramblings of the crispy-skinned failson from a once-powerful family can do actual, lasting, and potentially deadly damage.
Especially when said conspiracy clown has been tapped to become the overseer of America’s entire medical and health system, as is the case with Donald Trump’s HHS pick and guy who literally had both a worm eat part of his brain and who claimed that heroin addiction made him smarter, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Surprising few, it turns out Kennedy’s personal legal henchman has filed lawsuits intended to revoke FDA approval of vaccines for [checks notes, then checks again because this is a lot to swallow, even these days]: polio, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, and about a dozen other proven life-saving preventative scientific measures.
Now those sticks in the mud who point to the rigorous science behind these vaccines and the graveyards not full of dead people might claim that such an irresponsibly uninformed person should be nowhere nearer the nation’s health than the 500-foot radius the local CVS’ protection order keeps him at. On the other hand, conspiracists saw something on the inter-webs. As Stephen Colbert put it in fairness to the latter, “Yeah, they want to give polio a fighting chance.”
“Now if you don’t know about polio, that’s because we got rid of it! You’re welcome!”
stephen colbert
“Reminds me of this famous quote [Video of FDR]: ‘The only thing we have to fear is… polio! Polio is bad, you idiots! Why do you think I use a wheelchair? I didn’t fall off a frickin’ surfboard!'”
stephen colbert
“RFK Jr’s lawyer is also fighting the distribution of 13 other vaccines, including hepatitis A, tetanus, and diphtheria. Look, if we’re gonna start bringing back diseases from the past, could we at least bring back some fun stuff, too? I want to smoke on an airplane. I want to throw lawn darts. I want the old McDonald’s sugar-crusted fried apple pie pockets filled with apple-flavored lava!”
stephen colbert
C’mon, You’d Brag Too
Stephen Colbert went viral over the weekend. No, not thanks to RFK Jr. banning one of his vaccines [callback!], but thanks to footage of him dancing at the 70th birthday party of journalist Gayle King. Now, a middle-aged TV host doing some white guy moves at a colleague’s surprise party might not normally be the stuff of video virality—except that the footage was posted by King’s best pal Oprah Winfrey to her 22.5 million Instagram followers.
“Not only did I bust a move, I might have torn a hamstring.”
stephen colbert
“Sources are saying, this holiday season… I’m her favorite thing.”
stephen colbert
“I thought about twirling Oprah. And I immediately realized, you don’t twirl Oprah. You twirl for Oprah.”
stephen colbert
“[Colbert’s wife] Evie has a slightly different name for that move. It’s the ‘Stephen, please stop.'”
stephen colbert
Marge, the Doll’s Tryin’ to Kill Me and the Toaster’s Been Laughin’ At Me!
Nobody really needs top secret drones to steal Americans’ information. We give that away for free with every purchase!
[On reports that air-fryers are secretly listening in on users’ conversations] “Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised. Some of them are Ninjas.”
stephen colbert
[On reports that the fryers are sending user info to Chinese servers] “Over the weekend this bombshell report made headlines in the U.K. You can see it all in the classic British espionage movie, Tinker Tailor Soldier Fry.”
“Lawmakers just warned Apple that they should prepare to remove TikTok from the app store next month. In response, Apple said, ‘Absolutely, we’ll definitely remove TikTok, after just one more TikTok.'”
jimmy fallon
And Person Who…
Paint yourself a word picture to complete the joke.
“Take the case of former Maryland Governor and uncle having a blast at the wedding photo booth, Larry Hogan.”
stephen colbert
“Oh, speaking of things that are air-fried, RFK Jr.”
stephen colbert
“Headed back to New Jersey, there’s a new scandal involving Democratic Congressman and picture your mom texted you of her dentist who’s still single, Josh Gottheimer.”
stephen colbert
Potpourri
“Apple is planning to release a foldable iPhone. So if somebody butt-dials you they really had to work for it.”
jimmy fallon
[On recently released felon Steve Bannon “joking” about Trump running for a third term in 2028] “First of all, ‘Trump ’28’ sounds like Trump’s golf score when he cheats.”
seth meyers
“Now this is an obvious troll from Bannon. But then again, they’re always trolling until they’re not. Republicans are like guys that jokingly propose a three-way with their wife and her best friend. ‘I mean that’d be crazy right? Unless you’re into it? I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Unless, Brenda, though? Brenda’s a maybe?'”
seth meyers
“President-elect Trump said that he plans to permanently eliminate Daylight Savings Time. People are divided. Republicans don’t want to go back an hour while Democrats want to go back four years.”
jimmy fallon
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