Missed Wednesday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
But What If He’s Not Terrible?
There’s a high degree of difficulty in nightly political satire. The need to address what everyone’s already talking about risks rehashing tired territory, and amplifying the hot button over the big picture. By and large, the current roster of late-night hosts aim to be ambitious and responsible in their comedy, but even they can get caught up in the steamroller that is the 24-hour news cycle and what’s trending in the social media hellscape.
Joe Biden had a lousy debate while most of the hosts were on summer vacation. Their unanimously brutal takedown of the President’s sluggish performance upon returning rang with the need to play catch-up and a desire to solidify their comic cred as truth-tellers rather than partisans. (Even if there isn’t a single talk show host rooting for Donald Trump outside of a certain Fox News “comedian.“) Well, the news that Biden was holding what his aides are perhaps unwisely calling a “big boy press conference” right as the late-night shows taped their Thursday monologues robbed the comics of the punchlines for all their “should President Bided drop out/Biden is old” material. That left them to scrape together leftover jokes on the topic in anticipation of however the presser turned out. (Biden, as it happened, disappointed hungry Biden-bashers by holding a substantive, detailed, unscripted Q&A on complicated foreign policy matters, even if all most people in the media were talking about was his occasional gaffe, because glib unoriginality isn’t just for comedians any more.)
“It should be just another exchange with reporters, but instead it’s become the single most highly anticipated press conference since the Beatles landed in America. And Joe Biden, also there.”
seth meyers
“The whispers about Biden dropping out of the race are getting louder. They’re getting so loud, Biden can almost hear them.”
jimmy fallon
“NBC News anchor Lester Holt is set next week to interview President Biden. But if Biden really wants to prove he can beat Trump, he needs to go on Hot Ones.”
seth meyers
“Biden hasn’t seen this many people jump ship since he took that vacation on the Titanic.”
jimmy fallon
“President Biden this week tweeted ‘Google Project 2025’ in an attempt to warn voters about the risk of a second Trump term. And look, I know that Biden is old and out of touch, but it’s at least reassuring that he didn’t tell us to Ask Jeeves.”
seth meyers
[On GOP congressperson Lauren Boebert blaming Biden’s supposed decline on the Covid vaccine] “Yeah, no, I wonder could it have been a thoroughly tested vaccine that saved millions of lives and was subjected to rigorous safety trials by the world’s most renowned scientists? Or could it have been, I don’t know, the march of time?”
seth meyers
“Biden’s conference today was a big deal because it was unscripted. Like the whole country got invited to our grandpa’s level one improv class.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live Guest host Kumail Nanjiani
“So Joe Biden slashed the number of low wage workers by more than half, or, as the New York Times probably wrote, ‘Wages Rise, Much Like Biden’s Elderly Age.'”
seth meyers
[On former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying she’d support whatever Biden chose to do—after the President had unequivocally said he’s running] “That is some weapons-grade passive aggression.”
stephen colbert
[After a montage of pundits hyping Biden’s press conference as “high stakes”] “Are they talking about the President answering some questions or is David Blaine burying himself in a coffin full of clam chowder?”
seth meyers
“It’s 7/11, which is, of course, National Slurpee Day. But ever since the debate, a lot of people have been taking Big Gulps.”
stephen colbert
“Whenever Biden speaks, it’s like I’m a stage mom at her six-year-old’s commercial audition and I’m watching from the sidelines. Like, ‘C’mon honey, you’ve got this! We need you to land this job so we can keep our health insurance and keep my family out of concentration camps.'”
kumail Nanjiani
“That’s right, Biden’s team said he had a cold, to which I say, which Sudafed did you give him? Next time get him the good stuff, and I mean the good stuff. The stuff they make the meth out of, the stuff you have to ask the pharmacist for and they look at your driver’s license twice and you take it and it immediately dries out your nose and your mouth and every other part of your body and your mind starts racing like you just snorted a line of cocaine mixed with LSD in emergency and you feel like you’re invincible. But also you’re hallucinating and the next thing you know, you wake up in a hotel in Thailand with duct tape over your mouth and the cops are bangin’ on your door and then you glance over at your TV and you say, ‘Whoa, am I tripping balls or is that a news story about Lauren Boebert giving a handy to someone during Beetlejuice?'”
seth meyers
O Clooney, Where Art Your Head?
Speaking of buzzworthy but comparatively inconsequential news, hosts still had some George Clooney zingers saved up, since the actor recently was given New York Times space to counsel Joe Biden to retire. The fact that Donald Trump came out against Clooney’s move with one of the all-caps broadsides of childish name-calling and questionable spelling he usually reserves for people who are suing him for sexual assault may mean that his advisers think that Trump has a better shot at beating President Biden in November. Or it may mean that Donald Trump is a thin-skinned little man who can’t bear someone more rich and famous than him getting all the attention. You decide!
[On Trump bizarrely claiming that that whole movie star thing never really worked out for perennial Oscar contender and box office superstar George Clooney] “I’m sorry, movies never really worked out for George Clooney? The world famous mega movie star? His movies have more than 3.5 billion dollars at the box office. You know who movies never worked out for? Donald Trump. A man who somehow blew a one second cameo in Home Alone 2.”
kumail Nanjiani
[On Biden aides clapping back that Clooney left a fundraiser early while the President stayed the whole three hours] “Okay, fair enough. But most people would leave early too if they knew they were going home with George Clooney.”
stephen colbert
“Plus, George Clooney is really busy. He’s gotta leave. [Photo of Clooney’s Batman and Robin suit] He’s out protecting Gotham City as Nipple Man.”
stephen colbert
“That’s the Batman movie where his parents were murdered in a drive-by nurpling.”
stephen colbert
“Trump also sh*t the bed so badly in the 1994 Little Rascals movie in the role of ‘Waldo’s dad’ that this is the first time you’re hearing of it. That’s right, he killed the Little Rascals franchise like it knew the details of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”
kumail nanjiani
[On Trump telling Clooney to “go back to TV”] “Honestly, I could say the same to you. NBC could use both of you back.”
seth meyers
“Of course, the big difference between George Clooney and Donald Trump is that George Clooney actually made money from a casino.”
kumail nanjiani
The Other Dropout
After a week of nothing but stories about how Joe Biden’s listless debate performance meant he was unable to lead a country he was already leading, the New York Times finally joined papers like the Los Angeles Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer in reminding voters that the other guy in the race has a few issues of his own. You know, like trying to overthrow democracy and promising to do so again, being a convicted felon and legally judged rapist, sucking up to world dictators at his tacky Florida golf getaway, and facing multiple criminal trials over everything from hoarding top secret documents to pressuring state election officials to throw the 2020 race to him. Stuff like that. Anyway, hosts managed to squeeze in a few observations.
“Former President Trump is discussing plans which would reduce the sharing of U.S. intelligence with NATO. [Photo of the classified document dump in Trump’s golf resort restroom] Which I guess means just not letting them use the bathroom?”
seth meyers
“The New York Times published a big editorial called, ‘Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead.’ It’s the follow-up to their editorial, ‘Gonorrhea Is Unfun to Have.'”
stephen Colbert
“Woo, strong language. Be sure to read the other op-ed, ‘Battery Acid: Unpleasant to Drink.'”
seth meyers
“It doesn’t surprise me that Trump had no idea what NATO was. He probably thought it had something to do with sharks. ‘You have to keep the -nado away from the shark, because the shark is bad enough but when they combine, now you have a real problem because now it’s weather. I remember a shark came up to me once—big shark, strong shark—tears pouring from his dead, soulless eyes, and I said, ‘You remind me of Stephen Miller,’ and he said, ‘He’s my cousin.'”
seth meyers
Potpourri
“What a super chill time to be doing a topical monologue on national television. Just sharing your personal opinions with millions of people. I feel like right now I could come out in favor of ranch dressing and it would still end my career.”
Kumail Nanjiani
[On Russian plans to ship schoolchildren to North Korea for a state-run summer camp] “‘Cause nothing says summer fun like the words ‘North Korea’ and ‘camp.'”
stephen colbert
[On news that an airline passenger diverted a flight to Florida by biting one of the crew] “So if any of you kids wanna go to Disney, you know what you gotta do.”
seth meyers
[On National Slurpee Day] “Serious question: should humans be ingesting something with the words ‘slur’ and ‘pee’ in the name?”
kumail nanjiani
[On news that betting on the Summer Olympics is growing in popularity] “Honestly, show some class. Do what I do and wait until the Little League World Series.”
jimmy fallon
[On his favorite sport] “If you’re not familiar with the rules of cricket, it’s a lot like baseball, except… do we have three hours? No?”
kumail nanjiani
“I’ve got a major story out of China, where a man was stopped at customs with 100 live snakes down his pants. Reminds me of the old joke, ‘Is that a hundred snakes down your pants, or are you just so happy to see me that you’re writhing in pain as limbless reptiles savage your nards?'”
stephen colbert
“Speaking of airports, there’s an update from Boeing. You know their slogan: Your plane’s a convertible now.'”
stephen colbert
“According to a study from the University of Southern California, 70 percent of people rated jokes written by Chat GPT as funnier than those written by regular people. I mean, I kind of believe it. I can think of 50 people off the top of my head who aren’t as funny as a robot and some of them have Netflix specials.”
kumail nanjiani
“A.I. might be capable of writing jokes, but only a comedian can cry in their used Kia Sportage full of unsold merch after a disastrous set at Flappers in Burbank.”
kumail nanjiani
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