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.
A Flailing Strategy
Ever since President Joe Biden took the principled, country-over-self step of handing over the reins of his stalled 2024 reelection bid to Vice President Kamala Harris, GOP nominee Donald Trump has been largely sequestered in his Florida golf club. and classified documents dungeon. Some speculated that his campaign was coming up with a new and refocused tack to take down the suddenly dynamic duo of Harris and chosen running mate, endearingly folksy Minnesota Governor and “shaved mall Santa” (Stephen Colbert’s words) Tim Walz. Others cited Trump insider campaign sources that characterized the former President and current felon as sullen, desperate, and fuming that he’d have to come up with a whole different set of insulting nicknames, shameless lies, and rambling, incoherent screeds. (Trump, bless his racist little heart, did come out swinging by questioning Harris’ ethnicity at a disastrous Q&A with [checks notes] a roomful of Black female journalists. It did not go well.)
With most late-night hosts back from their two-week Olympics vacation (Jimmy Kimmel handing the keys to pal and next-door neighbor Jeff Goldblum as he kicked back for the entire summer), the comedy verdict was decidedly for the latter option, as Trump’s eventual reemergence speeches were called out for essentially playing the same delusional hits, while the Harris campaign drew massive crowds and high-profile endorsements. Jon Stewart, playing a side-by-side montage of Trump using the exact same insults on Harris and Biden (a new 1929 stock market crash, WWIII, “low-energy,” crowd size, etc), complained, “Dude, you can’t just find-and-replace Biden and Kamala. That’s lazy apocalypse-ing.”
[After a more-rambling-then-usual Trump attack in which he tried to land the point that nobody knows Kamala Harris’ last name(?)] “As someone who tells jokes for a living, let me just—a little advice. If the punch line is that nobody knows her last name is Harris, don’t use Harris in the set-up. ‘Folks, why did the chicken, who was trying to get to the other side, cross the road?'”
stephen colbert
[On Trump simply subbing Harris into his old Biden insults verbatim] “This is bullsh*t, man. This is like when Elton John changed like three words and then pretended ‘Candle in the Wind ‘was always about Diana.”
jon stewart
“Holy sh*t, he’s floundering in Ohio where J.D. Vance is a Senator. Next we’re gonna find out he’s losing to Kamala among voters who live at Mar-a-Lago.”
seth meyers
[On insider reports regarding Trump’s funk over having to campaign against Harris] “Of course, he’s grieving. No listen, he’s grieving for his lost lead against Joe Biden. He’s going through all the Trump stages of grief. It goes: anger, anger, denial (that you’re angry), hanger, and then nugget bucket.”
stephen colbert
[After an all-caps rant where Trump claimed that Harris’s massive, enthusiastic Detroit crowd size was an A.I. image, despite, you know, it not being that] “Just because there’s video and photographic evidence that Kamala Harris’ crowd was real doesn’t mean that it was real. And then you might say, ‘Oh, well Jon, I was actually there, I was in the crowd.’ And have you considered that you’re not real? Have you considered that?”
jon stewart
[On Trump claiming that his January 6 crowd—the one with the violent insurrection—was bigger than that assembled to hear Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech] “‘And you know, it’s not just King folks, people talk about Rosa Parks. but she only one seat in the front of that bus, and I’m telling you, with the wide load I’m pulling, I can spread out.'”
stephen colbert
“‘Fake crowd picture! I mean, many people are asking, is it cake? Get me Mikey Day and a big knife, we’re digging for sprinkles.'”
stephen colbert
“Trump’s not used to this. Someone else is getting more attention so he’s reacting like a dog reacts to a new baby in the family. ‘I’m calling a press conference to announce that I’ve urinated on the couch.'”
seth meyers
“To which J.D. Vance would say, ‘Hey, not cool, I have to have sex with that!’ [Turns to camera] Let me make something clear—J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch. Okay? Get your mind out of the gutter. Or as J.D. Vance’s grandma used to say, ‘Get your wang out of the cushions!'”
seth meyers
‘The fact that Kamala Harris is drawing such huge crowds is really getting under his—let’s call it skin.”
stephen colbert
[On Trump’s obvious pining for his old nemesis rather than the energized Harris/Walz ticket] “This is sad. It’s like seeing an old man talking to an empty spot on the bench, and then you realize thats where his life used to sit. He would give up everything for just one more moment… with Crooked Joe.”
jon stewart
[After Trump was caught calling Kamala Harris a ‘bitch’] “Sir, it’s pronounced karma and yeah, it’s a bitch.”
stephen colbert
Poor Wally
Seth Meyers has actually been on break for three weeks, which means he missed a lot of news. And that his trusty cue card guy got the workout of his career on Monday.
“I’m just gonna read off the cue cards to catch up on what I missed. Let’s see here. Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, oh wow. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, cool cool. Harris secured enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee, Biden got Covid, Trump claimed Biden never got Covid and it was just a ruse to drop out of the race, Republicans claimed that Harris tried to ban plastic straws and called her a DEI hire. Trump called her ‘Laughing Kamala,’ then ‘Lying Kamala,’ then ‘Kamabla.’ Republicans called her the Border Czar even though she wasn’t and that’s not a thing, Trump said he might bomb Mexico, J.D. Vance became the first VP nominee in decades to have a negative net favorability rating after he called Democrats ‘childless cat ladies,’ got slammed by Jennifer Aniston, and was accused of f**king a couch—which he did not do. Apparently, it was just hand stuff. Vance said Democrats would call him racist for drinking Diet Mountain Dew, Vance wrote the forward to a book by the Project 2025 guy while claiming he had nothing to do with Project 2025. Tim Walz called Republicans weird and said it’s Brat Summer, Trump responded by calling Hannibal Lecter ‘a lovely man.’ Ted Cruz said Kamala can’t have his cheeseburgers, Trump told Christians they won’t have to vote any more if he wins—Wally, how many more cards are there? [Cue card czar Wally Feresten: ‘We’re still in July.’] F**k me!”
seth meyers
“[After a deep breath] 190,000 people joined a White Dudes for Kamala event that raised over four million dollars, we found out that Colin Jost is too fragile to be outdoors, a Fox News host said voting for a woman turns you into a woman, A Closer Look writer Sal Gentile threw out the first pitch at a Mets game which isn’t newsworthy and shouldn’t be in here. Trump had a humiliating meltdown at the Association of Black Journalists where he attacked the moderator, got laughed at by the audience, and claimed among other things that Harris ‘happened to turn Black,’ which is both racist and insane. Trump said that VP candidates don’t matter after people made fun of his VP candidate and then congratulated Vladimir Putin on a prisoner swap that secured the release of American hostages. The Washington Post reported that Trump was investigated for allegedly taking over $10 million from Egypt until it was shut down by his Attorney General, Harris picked Tim Walz as a running mate, Walz joked about J.D. Vance f**king a couch—which he did not do. Everything was over cushion. Republicans called Walz ‘Tampon Tim,’ tried to swift boat him with lies about his service record and said he was the Bernie Sanders of Congress even though there is already a Bernie Sanders in Congress, famously named Bernie Sanders. J.D. Vance held a rally where the stage was so shoddy it looked like he was campaigning for Kamala, Trump held a deranged press conference where he invented a new theme park called Transgender World and claimed his crowd on January 6 was bigger than Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, he told a story about being in a helicopter that almost crashed with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, then Brown said that never happened, then it turned out Trump was confusing Brown with someone else. The Trump campaign got hacked, Harris overtook Trump in the polls, the New York Times called it the worst three weeks of Trump’s campaign, Trump slinked back to Twitter for an interview with Elon Musk, he descended further into madness by claiming that Kamala’s crowd in Detroit was A.I. and that the people at the rally didn’t actually exist. And on top of all that, a French pole vaulter knocked over the crossbar with his giant dong.”
seth meyers
Build That Walz!
[After Fox News shill Laura Ingraham tried to slam home a racist point about immigration and Black Lives Matter by placing the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee in Tim Walz’s Minnesota] “You’re right, Laura Ingraham, Minnesota has changed, because it apparently now includes Milwaukee.”
stephen colbert
“I tried to warn everyone not to let them annex their neighbor to create the midwestern superpower of Minnesconsin.”
stephen colbert
[On the fact that Walz does not own any investments or real estate] “Of course, I mean look at him. At best, he has a coffee can full of fives on top of the fridge.”
seth meyers
{After Walz rallied people to get out the vote in the short time ’til Election Day, claiming, ‘We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”] “That is the energy of a guy who clearly wakes up his kids at 7 a.m. on a Saturday to clean the garage. [In a suspiciously Chris Farley-esque cadence] ‘Come on, you can sleep when you’re dead! Come on, we’ll put on the soundtrack to The Big Chill and I’ll teach you how to use the power washer, kids!'”
stephen colbert
“[Harris’] 11th-hour candidacy has supercharged this campaign. It reminds me of when the Cleveland Cavaliers drafed LeBron James… to replace Joe Biden.”
stephen colbert
“I know that sounds exciting, but if we’ve learned anything in this campaign, it’s that polls don’t matter, only votes matter. Unless Donald Trump is losing, in which case, wheeeeeee!”
stephen colbert
[On the best-selling camouflage ‘Harris/Walz’ baseball caps] “Which means all over the American wilderness, the last thought of dying turkeys is, ‘[Gasp] I thought she was gonna go with Buttigieg.'”
stephen colbert
[On Republicans’ smearing Walz as ‘Tampon Tim’ for ensuring sanitary products would be available for free to all Minnesota students] “Who cares? You think it’s scandalizing for an eighth grade boy to see a tampon? The worst thing that will happen is that they’ll steal them, put them in their friend’s locker as a joke and their friend will say, ‘Not cool, Mike,’ and they’ll say, ‘Shut up, Dave,’ and then the principal will come by and say, ‘Those aren’t toys, now get to football practice,’ and they’ll say, ‘Yes, Mr. Walz.'”
seth meyers
[On the huge crowd greeting the Harris/Walz ticket] “It is the most successful presidential arena tour since James A. Garfield’s Gathering of the Garffalos.”
stephen colbert
Talk About Crashing and Burning
Now it’s easy to cite examples of Donald Trump lying and/or losing touch with reality so that all truth becomes one bleary wash of bigotry, self-aggrandizement, and addled nonsense. But Trump’s recent, Harris-smearing anecdote about an ill-fated helicopter trip pulled off the rare “all of the above” trifecta. While Trump was apparently once in a bumpy California helicopter ride long before Kamala Harris was in the White House, it was not, as he confidently claimed, alongside Black former San Francisco mayor (and former boyfriend of Kamala Harris) Willie Brown. It was, instead, with another Black politician in former Los Angeles councilman Nate Holden, who is not Willie Brown, never dated Kamala Harris, and in no way resembles Brown except, well, you know.
[On Trump claiming Brown took time out from the crash he was not involved with to dish dirt on Harris] “You were in a helicopter with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who famously dated Kamala Harris, and as the helicopter was going down, as you were plunging to your imminent death, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown turns to you and says, “This might not mean anything to you now… but do you remember that lady I was going out with?'”
jon stewart
“Do you know what this means? Nate Holden, former LA city council member, told Donald Trump, as their helicopter was going down, bad things about Kamala Harris—that I guess Willie Brown had told him. If they knew each other.”
jon stewart
“Donald Trump is not racist. He just meets a lot of people on death-helicopters. And he needs some mnemonic device help. ‘If the chopper goes down, that’s not Willie Brown.’ And, ‘If the flight’s not going great, you’re probably riding with Nate.'”
jon stewart
[On a typically un-self-aware campaign speech] “Donald Trump is telling American not to elect a liar. He’s like the Michael Jordan of lying. Or, as Trump would say it, the Willie Brown of lying.”
jon stewart
Talk About Pole Vaulting
As Seth Meyers referenced, a French Olympian pole vaulter (named Anthony Ammirati) failed to medal after his, um, equipment grazed the crossbar.
“You know, I felt bad for him. But then again, I didn’t.”
jimmy fallon
[After claiming he’s planning to enter the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics] “I’m not going to do the pole vaulting. You know why.”
jimmy kimmel live guest host jeff goldblum
“The big winners at the Olympics were Team USA, China, and the French pole vaulter’s Tinder account.”
jimmy fallon
Potpourri
[On rumors that former Trump spokes-liar Kellyanne Conway is considering rejoining her old boss] “Reporters are just waiting for her official denial to confirm it.”
seth meyers
[On the U.S. Summer Olympics success] “Americans bit so many medals, their teeth looked British.”
jimmy fallon
[On the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics] “I hear that they’re putting an L.A. twist on some of the events. This is what I hear, there’s gonna be facelifting, farm-to-table tennis, and the 50-meter name drop.”
jeff goldblum
“Somebody told me one time, he said, ‘Jeff Goldblum, you should never ever name drop.’ You know who told me that? Robert De Niro.”
jeff goldblum
[On a Southwest Airlines employee being arrested for stealing $79 thousand in travel vouchers] “His punishment? Using them.”
jimmy fallon
[On a police dog sniffing out a massive cocaine stash in a shipment of bananas] “Though I think at that point he found some bananas in a cocaine shipment.”
seth meyers
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