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.
Failure to Lift Off
Donald Trump has a new supporter that’s making all the internet sing… with laughter over his wild-eyed Trump rally appearance where the tech billionaire attempted, and some would say failed, to achieve human-style exuberance. Leaping (by the dictionary definition at least) into the air with flanks exposed to proclaim his support of the guy who’s been threatening other tech moguls with prison, censorship, and sanctions, “free speech absolutist” Musk’s appearance in his “dark MAGA” black baseball cap essentially signaled the death of all irony.
Having previously claimed with a straight face, “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral,” the social media maven with 200 million followers (“completely organically,” stated Jon Stewart, failing to keep a straight face) has thrown his considerable influence behind a candidate explicitly threatening to imprison late-night comics critical of him, movies critical of him, and basically anyone who dares to criticize him in any way.
As Stewart noted, Musk has even started offering cold, hard, election interfering cash to anyone signing up new voters for Trump. Which is the dictionary definition (damn you, dictionary!) of the sort of political f**kery Trump has laughably accused others of enacting.
Calling out anyone in Donald Trump’s orbit for hypocrisy is to ignore the fact that facts simply do not matter in Trump world. But hosts gave it a shot anyway, when they weren’t mocking Musk for being such a dork.
“Elon Musk spoke on stage on Saturday at former President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania and wore an ‘Occupy Mars’ t-shirt and jumped up and down twice. Said Trump, ‘Ugh, he’s like the son I already have.'”
seth meyers
“That is the reason why you don’t give kids Mountain Dew.”
jimmy fallon
“It’s like, you know how at the end of a comedy in the ’80s they do a freeze frame explaining what happened?”
jimmy kimmel
“He’s acting like a guy who won a radio contest. ‘Whoa, I can’t believe I get to bid on the washer-dryer!'”
jon stewart
“It was exciting for all the Trump supporters because for the first time they got to see an actual billionaire.”
jimmy fallon
“Both so terrible—Tweeter Dee and Tweeter Dumb.”
jimmy kimmel
“Elon Musk spoke at former president Trump’s rally, wore a black MAGA hat and said, ‘As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m dark MAGA.’ And when I heard that I cringed so hard I momentarily had abs.”
seth meyers
“Dark MAGA? I didn’t know it came in flavors. I wonder if for the holidays they’ll come out with a peppermint bark MAGA. Or pumpkin spice MAGA. ‘I like my MAGA like I like my coffee—filled with chemicals that trick your taste buds into thinking you’re drinking autumnal food.'”
jon stewart
“This dude thinks he’s dark? Dude, you’re the whitest person ever born. You’re the same color they paint apartments after someone moves out. ‘We got a new renter, we gotta Musk up the walls.'”
seth meyers
“During the rally, Trump praised Elon Musk for saving free speech with X, and Musk praised Trump for making Truth Social so bad that people still use X.”
jimmy fallon
[On the widely mocked photo of Musk and Trump shaking hands] “It’s rare you get to see two devils making a deal with each other.”
jimmy kimmel
Musky With Fascism
Not content with openly contradicting his stated (if transparently bullsh*t) principles, Musk went on to throw his explicit support behind the MAGA movement’s barely implicit threats of violence should their Chosen Leader not win the 2024 presidential election.
“The Second Amendment is there to ensure we have the First Amendment” was Musk’s pitch to Trump’s crowd assembled in the place where an on-the-record MAGA supporter attempted to exercise his Second Amendment rights at Donald Trump’s skull and managed to shoot several people, one fatally. Musk was greeted by hoota from Trump’s rally crowd and nods of approval from Trump himself. Jon Stewart, however, had a different take—with a dash of media sensation adorable baby animals for flavor.
[After Elon Musk called Donald Trump a champion of free speech] “Elon were you not watching the rest of the show? A movie Trump doesn’t like is going to get sued. A tech mogul he doesn’t like he wants to put in prison. It’s not free speech if only Trump’s admirers get to do it without consequence. That’s just not how it works. It doesn’t go that way. I don’t see how his support of free speech is ‘expose the belly’ worthy.”
jon stewart
[On Trump’s threats to throw Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg in jail for supposed election interference] “That’s why he’ll be in prison? Not for promising me a beautiful life in the Metaverse? Oh JS-69-420, the life we could have led.”
jon stewart
[On Musk’s implicit call to violence] “Guns don’t protect the free speech. Our free speech is protected by the consent of the governed laid out through the Constitution. It’s not based on the threat of violence. It’s based on elections, organizing referendums, a judicial system. Our social contract offers many, many avenues to remedy these issues and allows both sides to be heard and adjudicated. Guns from what I can tell, serve to mostly protect the speech of the people holding the gun. Its’a tool of intimidation. And, if I may finish… [points finger guns at cheering audience] Listen motherf**kers, I’m not done!”
jon stewart
[Continuing] “It is a tool of intimidation and one that I think is actually being irresponsibly and recklessly invoked because some people in your crowd thought they might have been ‘shadow banned by Facebook.’ I mean for God’s sakes, you guys are in Butler Pennsylvania. The whole reason you’re there is because some f**king asshole with an AR-15 tried to permanently litigate his vision of this country’s free speech. That’s why you’re there. The whole point of a society is that guns don’t decide it. I would prefer at this moment not to trade in a government that offers me many remedies for my concerns, legitimate or illegitimate, for a situation where my rights are determined by how many militia members agree with me. The country ain’t perfect. And there’s a lot of issues we don’t agree on—choice, immigration, shrinkflation of snack chips, the unholy marriage of penguins and hippos. But honestly, dude, a country that can honestly adjudicate these complicated issues through a sometimes frustrating, overly bureaucratic constitutional system of checks and balances and peaceful transfer of power is the only kind of country I want the children of Pesto and Moo Deng to grow up in.”
jon stewart
Rallying to Get the Hell Out
As Seth Meyers pointed out in his “A Closer Look” segment Monday night, there’s no surer way to get under Trump skin than to report on the footage of people leaving his rallies early. Oh, unless you say he’s got small hands. Or isn’t really 6’2″. Or link to proof that he’s not as rich as he brags about being. Or say that Joe Biden has a better beach body. Or make jokes about him at the Oscars. Or fact-check him, ever. Or point out that you can’t change a hurricane’s path to better suit your political needs with a Sharpie.
Point is, Donald Trump is a thin-skinned little manbaby.
“You’re supposed to leave them wanting more. Trump leaves them wanting out.”
seth meyers
[On Trump asking people to deny their senses about the crowds exiting his rallies mid-ramble] “He sounds like a 13-year-old at a haunted house insisting he didn’t pee his pants. ‘Uh, yeah, that’s not pee. It looks like pee but it’s actually water. When the zombie with the chainsaw popped up and scared us all I thought it was so not scary that it was actually funny to me. So I laughed so much I spit out the water I was drinking. And I was looking down—politely I might add—because I didn’t want the actor playing the zombie to see me laughing and get discouraged and quit his job and whatnot in the haunted house. So now I’m laughing with water, I’m spitting and it got all over my crotch.'”
seth meyers
“‘You might see people in the parking lot getting in their cars and driving away, but they’re not leaving. They’re driving to a second location where I’ll be taking photos because I was late to this rally. Of course if I’m late to a second location they’ll have to leave and go to a third location and wait for me to take photos, and if I’m late to the third location which I definitely will be, they can come back here and wait for the next rally. It’s all part of my new Trump escape room!'”
seth meyers
[On a Washington Post report chronicling some 220 people who left a recent Trump rally early] “220 people in the first 20 minutes! I mean, even Jets fans stay ’til the third quarter. I mean now—by November they won’t.”
seth meyers
[On Trump attacking him again for a 7-month-old joke over the weekend] “This is what he’s stewing about on a Sunday afternoon 28 days before the election. He’s still whining about a joke I made about him seven months ago. Not even the winners of the Oscars last year think about the Oscars as much as Donald Trump does.”
Oscars host jimmy kimmel
“Former President Trump held a rally on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, which featured a moment of silence. Specifically when he said, ‘Please welcome J.D. Vance.'”
seth meyers
Laser Focused on Idiocy
While it’s fun to mock Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green for being the most conspiracy-minded, unhinged, deeply stupid member of Congress (and take a moment to ponder that), the fact that this… person (damn you, dictionary!) was elected by some 200,000 American citizens of the state of Georgia in the last election raises a whole lot of red flags about just where one major party is at.
Did those Georgians flock to Greene because of that time she stalked and harassed a teenage school shooting victim for suggesting that gun control should be part of the national conversation? Or for questioning whether school shootings were “false flag” operations designed to grab guns like the ones she threatened to bring onto the House floor while repeatedly calling for political violence against Democrats. (Greene’s threats are one of the main reasons metal detectors were installed.) Was it Greene screeching through the mail slot of future colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office door, or how she voted against giving medals to the Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol during Trump’s attempted January 6 coup?
Were Georgia voters wowed by her appearance alongside—and subsequent defense of—noted literal Nazi Nick Fuentes? Or how she was expelled by her equally repellent conservative Freedom Caucus for calling Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO, and another test case) a “little bitch?” Okay, there may be some bi-partisan overlap there. Sadly, perhaps it was her profoundly bananas anti-Semitism that truly sealed Georgia Republicans’ deal, with Greene’s on the record accusation that [sighs in resignation at having to write about this one more time] Jewish people are controlling the weather with their space lasers. Well, maybe sensing that that’s where her base truly lives, Greene doubled down over the weekend, pointing to the fact that hurricanes happen when she posted, “Yes they can control the weather,” while accusing someone of setting those secret space lasers on exclusively Republican voting strongholds.
You can’t make someone like this up—but apparently Republicans in Georgia can repeatedly elect her to office.
“Listen Marjorie, if they could control they weather, they would have made sure a house landed directly on you, you demented wicked witch.”
jimmy kimmel
“Is this the space laser thing again? Jews don’t control the weather. If we could control the weather don’t you think we’d make Florida less humid?”
jon stewart
Speaking of Dangerous Bigots
It’s got to be tough on the MAGA faithful when their cries of “How dare you compare Donald Trump to Hitler!” are immediately followed by Donald Trump saying something directly out of the Nazi racial purity playbook. You know, like this weekend, when Trump said that (majority non-white) immigrants to America had “bad genes.” Cue Trump supporters flooding Twitter with posts beginning, “Well, actually…”
“In fairness, it sounded better in the original German.”
jimmy kimmel
“If there’s anyone who knows about bad genes, it’s the guy who fathered Don Jr. and Eric.”
jimmy kimmel
And Speaking of Dangerous Weirdos
Sometimes even a professional joke writer is at a loss.
“No matter how much you hear about Trump, it’s difficult to grasp just how weird and unhinged he is until you see it first hand. As someone who’s spent the last 10 years trying to describe him, I also find myself running out of words. You know, you start with classics: weird, insane, incoherent, unhinged, unglued, deluded. You know, then you’ve gotta flip through a thesaurus: erratic, discursive, disjointed. Then you try a psychology textbook: narcissist, sociopath, dementia, clinically bad dancer. And then you just give up and you say he’s a [long string of bleeped out words] dogs.”Â
seth meyers
[After a montage of Trump’s greatest hits: sharks, windmills, Luciano Pavarotti, low-flow toilets] “How do you describe any of that. It’s like someone captured a sick Bigfoot and made it watch a thousand hours of bad stand-up comedy? Is that close?”
seth meyers
“I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I’m out of ideas. Trying to make sense of a Trump speech is like looking through my YouTube recommendations after I spend an entire night getting high on my couch. It’s like, ‘Why is the algorithm recommending Silence of the Lambs clips, Pavarotti, Jaws, and home improvement tutorials?'”
seth meyers
And There Go Those Potential Sponsors
As much as their parent networks would probably prefer their late-night hosts stay away from jokes about the failures, debacles, and fiery near-disasters of companies that might pay to advertise, sometimes you just have to beat up on airlines and fast food. So states comedy law.
“McDonald’s is suing major beef producers for conspiring to limit their supplies. Meanwhile, Arby’s is like, ‘This doesn’t affect us.'”
jimmy fallon
“Over the weekend, a Frontier Airlines flight caught on fire after landing in Las Vegas. Yup, apparently Frontier Airlines is filling the void that Spirit created.”
jimmy fallon
“Spirit Airlines might have to file for bankruptcy. On the bright side, if they go out of business it’ll be easy to fix.” [Photoshopped picture of a Spirit Halloween Airlines plane.]
jimmy fallon
[On the junk food-scarfing, 78-year-old Trump refusing to release his medical records] “It’s probably best not to know. It’s like when Applebee’s revealed the calorie counts on their menu and people were like, ‘Should have kept that a secret.'”
jimmy fallon
Potpourri
“President Biden made a surprise appearance Friday at the White House press briefing. And you know a President has one foot out the door when their appearance at the White House is a surprise. That’s like saying I made a surprise appearance here.”
seth meyers
[On his Jimmy Kimmel Live guest, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz] “Not only is Governor Walz here tonight for an interview, he showed up two hours early to rake all the leaves off our porch.”
jimmy kimmel
“Think Donald Trump ever handled a rake? Not even in a sand trap.”
jimmy kimmel
“The Mets are battling the Philadelphia Phillies and, this is fun, if the Mets win, Philly’s mayor is sending New York’s mayor a cheesesteak. And if the Phillies win, New York’s mayor is sending him ten first-class round trip tickets on Turkish Airlines.”
jimmy fallon
“You may have noticed, it’s October. The month named for the Roman goddess Octomom.”
jon stewart
“Vice President Harris just appeared on an episode of the podcast, ‘Call Her Daddy.’ Not to be outdone, Trump was just invited onto Putin’s podcast, Call Him Vladdy.”Â
jimmy fallon
“I look like Sebastian Stan if you were to put his face through one of those filters on TikTok that shows your appearance right before you die.”
jon stewart
[On Trump’s refusal to release his medical records] “I mean, I think we all know why he’s not releasing them. Trump’s basically a walking Check Engine light.”
jimmy fallon
[On Republicans’ undisguised hope for an “October Surprise” to help Trump] “What does it actually say about a party that a war, a strike, and a natural disaster work in their favor? ‘Sir, the election’s close, but if we could just get the population shellshocked and desperate.'”
jon stewart
“LeBron James and his son Bronny yesterday became the first father-son duo to play together on an NBA team. Well, it probably happened with Wilt Chamberlain, you know, he just didn’t know. That’s just stat stuff.”
seth meyers
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