With the economy crashing in part thanks to Trump’s inconsistent tariffs and trade wars and pretty much the entire world retaliating against Trump’s right-hand man Elon Musk for dismantling the federal government and openly siding with Russia, late night had plenty of incentive to pile on on Monday. And pile on they did. Here’s our rundown of Monday’s monologues.
Seth Meyers
Pointing out the contortions right-wing media put themselves through to reconcile the stuff Donald Trump said mere weeks ago with his backtracking on those same issues now is a longstanding late-night joke staple. So much so that Seth Meyers loudly proclaimed that he wouldn’t do so on Monday just because there was a ready stockpile of montages demonstrating that locked and ready to go, stating unequivocally, “I’m not a dancing monkey!”
Cut to: clip after clip of Fox News leaping to the defense Trump’s many, many proclamations that the economy and stock market would be fixed “on day one” if he were elected, only for him to now claim that people shouldn’t pay attention to the stock market, and that managing the economy is really hard, you guys.
“I love how Fox hosts have to talk to Trump when he says something insane. They can’t just say, ‘That’s not true,’ so they repeat his own words back to him with a raised eyebrow. That’s how you talk to your fianceé’s parents the first time you meet them. ‘Oh, so you think the Super Bowl halftime show was a DEI plot to indoctrinate America with wokeness?'”
on Fox’s Maria Baritromo’s reaction to trump blaming Joe biden for the current economic downturn
“Now to be fair, Trump only said the stock market would crash if Biden won. He didn’t say it would do well if he won. For all we knew his point was, ‘Look Maria, it’s gonna eat sh*t either way, so let’s have some fun and get a crazy person back in the Oval Office.'”
“I’m starting to feel like the ‘business’ in Fox Business is the same as the business in monkey business. It doesn’t mean ‘things of an economic manner’ but ‘shenanigans!’ I’m gonna start telling my kids, ‘We’re having dinner at a fancy restaurant tonight, and I won’t stand for any fox business!'”
“‘You can’t really watch the stock market?’ That’s all you’ve talked about for years. What do you want us to watch instead? ‘Maria, it’s a mistake to watch the stock market when you should be watching Severance. What a show, it’s a great show.'”
“‘But they are the politest cartels we’ve ever had to deal with. The Canadian cartels are so polite. ‘Hey, welcome to our drug lab, eh? Would you mind smokin’ a little meth to prove you’re not a cop, eh?'”
on trump adminstration figures echoing trump’s claim that his trade war is really a drug war against mexican cartels… in canada
“So during the campaign you said you’d fix the economy on Day One, and now that you’re president you’ve turned into George R.R. Martin. ‘You guys, these things take time.'”
“‘It will be great for the farmers and, in a way, we’ll all become farmers. Because food will be so expensive, you’ll have to start growing vegetables in your back yard. My favorite vegetable, of course—the steak.'”
Meyers then moved on to how all this “chaos” is causing fractures even within Trump’s own cabinet. Referencing a recent report of an Oval Office blow up between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio over Musk’s DOGE layoffs, Meyers had a few theories about the reasons.
“Of course he did. Even when he’s doing a press conference with Elon, he looks like he’s in hour three of a match at Wimbledon.”
on reports of trump watching the heated exchange “like a tennis match”
“Trump wants everything to run smoothly until it gets boring, and then he wants chaos because it’s fun. He’s the kind of guy who would bring up politics at Thanksgiving just to get a rise out of everyone. ‘You know what, this has been a really great dinner. Too good in fact. What does everything think about the casting in the new Little Mermaid movie? Uncle Joe, you’ve had a few drinks, why don’t you go first.'”
Stephen Colbert
Meyers was hardly alone, as the spectacle of the economy’s “fall down, go boom” plunge and Trump World telling everyone it’s no big deal caught the attention of The Late Show‘s Stephen Colbert, too. At least Daylight Saving Time is rushing things toward, as Colbert put it, “closer to the end of… whatever this is.”
“Now I don’t know a lot of financial jargon, but let’s just say that your 401 is not ‘kay.”
“That’s not the advice you get from your financial guy. That’s what the shaman says as he’s pouring the ayahuasca down your throat.”
on Fox Business’ Charlie Gasparino claiming the plummeting stock market is okay because trump is planning to “unleash the animal spirit”
“Do you know how hard it is to exhaust Wall Street? They wake up every morning to a hot cup of cocaine, and then—just to take the edge off—more cocaine.”
“In the first Trump term, it took a disease to destroy the economy. This time, he is the disease.”
on the GDP falling below covid levels
“Oh sure, with a big enough time perspective, nothing really matters. ‘Beth, I can tell you are mad that I’m two hours late to our wedding. But I remind you, on a geological scale, two hours is punctual. Does a mountain care that I got distracted by looking at sandwiches on TikTok?'”
on trump revising “on day one” to “in the grand sceheme of things…”
Colbert then segued to how Trump’s anti-DEI policies throughout the government are also making the bad sort of impact. As Colbert put it, “While Trump’s economic plan may be chaos, his plan for reforming the government is also that.”
“The supposed reason Trump killed DEI in government is because he wants to hire on merit only. Like his merit hire at Defense, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. One of the top three weekend Fox & Friends hosts currently shotgunning a mini bottle of Fireball.”
“He’s less DEI and more DUI.”
“A list clearly made by men who have experience barriers having sex with women.”
on mandates to cut all potentially DEI-related terms, including “barriers,” “sex,” and “women”
“It has been replaced with a photo of the famous Enola Your Uncle’s Longtime Roommate.”
on Trump’s DEI sweep forcing the removal of photos of WWII bomber Enola gay
Taylor Tomlinson
The After Midnight host delved further into the international response to Elon Musk over both his unelected attempts to destabilize the American government and his now open cheerleading for Russia in its war with U.S. and NATO ally Ukraine. At least for those ticked off at the South African billionaire, there are some easily identifiable targets to retaliate against.
“It really is giving straight guy at the lesbian bar.”
on mardi gras parade-goers pelting a participating Cybertruck with boos and beads
“If you have a Cybertruck, stay out of parades, they’re too controversial. That’s why the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade doesn’t have a giant inflatable Kevin Spacey.”
“Obviously, Cybertrucks are ugly. I think people who like them are into all the weird corners. Maybe because they’re the type of people who like to corner you at a party.”
“He’s abandoned his companies so hard, you’d think it was one of his kids.”
“I think putting tariffs in place that affect Elon is a great idea, which is why I’m proposing a tariff on hair plugs.”
“The main takeaway here is that Tesla is imploding. Which must be so hard on Elon because he usually prefers exploding.”
“That picture is hilarious. It’s like when a douchebag wears a bracelet that says feminist. You can’t just slap on a label, I can still see the rest of you.”
on tesla owners trying to disguise their cybertrucks with other car models’ logos
Jimmy Fallon
The Tonight Show host leapt into the economic breach on Monday as well, his jokes landing equally on Trump and Elon Musk, whose own economic fortunes appear to be sinking along with the country’s.
“Trump was like, ‘Depends if we use my economic policies from this morning or this afternoon.'”
on trump refusing to rule out his policies causing a nationwide recession
“But we’re in good hands. If anyone knows how to fight a recession, it’s Elon Musk.”
over a photo of a young elon musk’s hairline vs. his suspiciously fuller present day one
“It’s not great when the summary of your first two months in office is ‘stocks down, measles up.'”
On Trump now floating a 250% tariff on Canadian dairy products
“Dairy prices don’t affect Trump because most of the cheese that he uses comes in Whiz form.”
“It was rough, all day long users had to get their disinformation from Facebook.”
on Musk’s Twitter suffering a massive outage on monday
“On the bright side, usually when you hear about a Tesla plunge it’s when it drives itself into a river.”
on Tesla’s stock price
Jimmy Kimmel
While Kimmel would get to all the Trump news, he started his monologue by attacking the one thing perhaps even more hated on this first Monday after Americans were once more forced to set their clocks ahead. Of course, Kimmel also managed to tie Daylight Saving Time back to Trump, since Trump is now waffling over his campaign promise to do away with a practice Kimmel notes that pretty much everyone loathes.
“I tried something different this year. I set my clocks ahead four years. Didn’t work.”
“We go forward, we go back. It’s like living in a Christopher Nolan movie.”
“We have Donald Trump firing air traffic controllers, screwing up our national parks, threatening to annex Canada, focusing on all these dumb things. And not just dumb things—unpopular things. Why not focus on a dumb popular thing?”
Even Kimmel couldn’t halt time until he had to dig into the weekend’s Trump news, chiming in on that report of a heated argument between Elon Musk and Marco Rubio over Musk’s government firing spree.
“He dresses like the first person eliminated from the World Series of Poker.”
on musk’s oval office attire
“[Trump] really has turned this into The Celebrity Appresident.”
“Poor little Marco. He used to be this powerful senator, now he’s first mate on the Spraytanic.”
Kimmel also noted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directives to excise all “DEI” terms from departmental documents, with the axe falling on terms like “Black” (but not “white”), “female” (not “male”), and that picture of the Enola Gay, because, well, you know.
“And you’re next, bi-planes, you’ll see.”
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