Missed Thursday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
Weird? Smeared!
Nothing more persuasively says you’re not weird than booking airtime on your hand-picked propaganda channel and loudly responding to your softball interviewer by shouting, “I’m not weird, they’re the ones who are weird!” at every opportunity. That whole, “Republicans, with their creepy plots to track women’s menstrual cycles, sweaty obsession with other people’s sex lives, genders, and where people go to the bathroom, and habit of nominating candidates with secret, decade-long porn store habits are very weird” tactic has proven effective for Democrats, especially when the GOP Vice Presidential pick orders fast food like an alien in a human suit and their three-time POTUS choice smears himself in orange paint and brags about how pretty he is.
But fear not, as Republicans have come roaring back against this obvious slander. You know, by holding an illegal photo op at a shrine to national war dead and physically assaulting the female staffer objecting to their ghoulish PR stunt. And by trotting out distant family members of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz in misspelled novelty t-shirts to insult the person they’ve never actually met in person. Or by nominating a presidential candidate who routinely goes off topic in live events on subjects ranging from “sharks are bad,” to “solar power doesn’t work when it’s cloudy,” to his his love for pal, “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.” Or by holding a comfy, two-part Fox News “town hall” hosted by a fawning Sean Hannity and ordering voters to pick him even though he admits they hate his guts. Jumping on Trump’s uninspiring ultimatum to Fox viewers that they’d better vote for him or else, Stephen Colbert noted, “‘You’ve got no choice’ isn’t the most exciting pitch. It’s like when Cracker Barrel changed its slogan to, ‘Look, it’s us or the gas station.'”
“‘You might not like me, you might even hate me. You might despise me so much that the sound of my voice haunts your nightmares and the sight of my grotesque, leathery face fills you with an all-consuming, incandescent rage that burns so deeply within the recesses of your soul that it fills you with, every waking moment, thoughts of bitterness and contempt, and when you see my ghastly countenance on television, you howl in pain. You howl like Ahab grappling to the last with his nemesis the whale. ‘From hell’s heart, I stab thee,’ you say, ‘for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!’ But still, you gotta vote for me.'”
seth meyers
“Tonight was night two of Trump’s Fox News clown hall. Sean Hannity, he gave Trump another vigorous Hannity job as only he can.”
jimmy kimmel
“During last night’s town hall, Donald Trump criticized ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos and said that his interview with President Biden was ‘the softest interview I’ve ever seen.’ You’re gonna say that while you’re being interviewed by Sean Hannity? I ask tougher questions when John Oliver is here.”
seth meyers
“‘I’m just a regular guy who lives in a gold house and has an orange face.'”
jimmy kimmel
“In a Fox News town hall last night, former President Trump said the word ‘weird’ eleven times in about 30 seconds. Good thing he stopped at 11, because 12 times would have summoned J.D. Vance to the stage.”
seth meyers
[After Trump told Hannity he couldn’t imagine anyone in New Hampshire voting for Joe Biden] “Yeah, I can’t imagine anyone in New Hampshire voting for Biden. You know why? Because he’s not on the ballot any more. ‘I can’t imagine anyone in New Hampshire voting for my opponent, the late, great Toucan Sam. Toucan Hussein Sam.'”
stephen colbert
[On Trump refuting the “weird” thing by promising that both he and Veep pick J.D. Vance are “solid rock”] “‘A lot of people are saying weird, we have some weird ideas, but not true. [Points to head] Solid rock. Right there, igneous baby.'”
stephen colbert
[After Trump’s digression thanks to a mosquito he claimed was “running around” the Fox News studio] “And what do you mean they’re ‘running around?’ Mosquitoes are running arou—he can’t even talk about mosquitoes in a normal way. ‘You know the worst thing about these mosquitos running around, is you can’t hear their tiny footsteps. That’s why we need a wall made of citronella. And we’re gonna make the mosquitoes pay for it.'”Â
seth meyers
“First of all, the opposite of ‘weird’ isn’t ‘solid,’ it’s ‘normal.’ That’s something you might know if you weren’t—and I wish there were a better word for this—f**king weird.”
seth meyers
“Second, just blurting out, ‘We’re not weird guys!,’ isn’t doing the work you think it is. It wasn’t even the question, nobody said anything about weird. Can you imagine Trump as a contestant on Family Feud. ‘Top five answers are on the board: Name something you bring to a party.’ [Buzzes in] ‘A parakeet, a Ziploc bag full of pills, a rubber dog turd, I’m not weird.'”
seth meyers
[Following a clip of even Fox News hosts desperately trying to get a rambling, uninvited call-in Trump to hang up] “It f**king took both of them working together. He’s the former President hoping to be the next President, they treated him like a customer on QVC who can’t make up their mind.”Â
seth meyers
“Former President Trump said in an interview yesterday that his son Barron has enrolled at New York University and added, ‘He has a very high-aptitude child but he’s no longer a child. He’s just passed into something beyond child-dom.’ I think the word you’re looking for is ‘adulthood.’ And the other word you’re looking for is ‘childhood.’ And the other word you’re looking for is ‘Barron.'”Â
seth meyers
Terminal Weirdness Is a Vice (Presidential Candidate)
Look, some people are socially awkward. There’s nothing wrong with that. But coupling sweaty public weirdness with a douchey overconfidence and condescending manner is absolute, cringe-inducing creepiness. Anyway, J.D. Vance went to a donut shop the other day.
[After a donut shop worker responded to Vance explaining that he’s running for Vice President with an unimpressed, “Okay”] “I’m guessing not the response he was expecting. ‘I wrote a best selling book.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘They made it into a movie.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Anyway, now I’m doing this and I’m starting to worry that, outside of my conservative bubble, most folks are Instantly repulsed by my personality, but at this point I’ve hitched my wagon to a man I hate and I’m concerned we’ll not only lose the election but I’ll lose any sense of who I am.’ ‘Okay. So, um, you want a donut?'”
stephen colbert
“I had such second-hand embarrassment watching that that I had to peer through my hands like it was a Saw movie. This dude orders donuts like his kidnapper’s watching him from the car.”Â
Seth Meyers
“‘How long have I been in this donut shop? Forever? Okay.'”
stephen colbert
[On Vance filling an awkward pause by telling the workers to fill his donut box with “Whatever makes sense”] “Whatever makes sense? They’re donuts, they all make equal sense, which is none. They’re a breakfast that is dessert. Eat any of them and you’ll feel full and starving.”
stephen colbert
[On Trump’s veer into weirdness talk with Sean Hannity] “And I love how, unprompted, he immediately just throws Vance under the bus. ‘Mr. President, how would you solve inflation?’ ‘Well, you know everyone is saying that J.D. is a very weird man, you know. He’s obsessed with childless women and he can’t even order donuts without creeping everybody out, but I don’t think he’s weird. Solid rock!'”
seth meyers
[After Democratic Veep nominee Tim Walz shaded Vance during his own, decidedly not-awkward trip to a donut shop] “Damn. Let me ask you a question, is J.D. Vance a donut? Because Tim Walz is dunking him.”
stephen colbert
[On a clip of Vance awkwardly attempting to fist-bump striking auto workers] “He grabbed that woman’s fist bump. ‘Ah the female has presented her fist, I know this one. Paper covers rock, man covers woman, woman bears child. Human interaction complete.'”
stephen colbert
There’s No Debate—Wait, There Totally Is a Debate
How all Trump’s weirdness and increasing inability to complete a sentence will play during Tuesday’s presidential debate against former prosecutor Kamala Harris is anybody’s guess. (Psst, bet on ‘weirdly.’) Host ABC is doing its part to try and keep this approaching train wreck from taking out too much innocent scenery, with both camps agreeing to mute each candidate’s microphone when it’s not their turn to speak, and specifying, oddly, that no props can be used during the debate. That’s a bummer for Stephen Colbert who lamented of the stipulation, “That last one, no props, started in 2012 when Mitt Romney clinched the final debate against Obama by smashing a watermelon.”
Regardless, here’s hoping that Trump doesn’t repeat his behavior from the last time he debated a female candidate, when he crept up behind a speaking Hillary Clinton like Jason Voorhees with a bad combover.
“Next week’s the debate which will be held here on ABC between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. ABC News released the agreed-upon rules for Tuesday’s duel. Each candidate will be given a pen, a pad of paper, a bottle of water, and a knife, and that’s it.”
jimmy kimmel
“To figure out who gets which podium and which one goes first or last, they flipped a coin, and Trump won the coin toss. Thank God. Otherwise we’d have to listen to months of coin denial.”
stephen colbert
“They flipped a coin to determine who would speak last and Trump won the coin flip. Or as Trump put it, ‘I won the debate.'”
jimmy fallon
“There will be no audience, but afterwards Trump will claim there were 30 thousand people chanting his name.”
jimmy kimmel
[On muted microphones] “Man. that’s gonna be awfully hard on Trump. I give him about 10 minutes before he starts holding up signs like Wile E. Coyote.”Â
seth meyers
[On Trump preemptively condemning host ABC as “the worst network”] “And I just want to say, as somebody who has worked at ABC for over two decades, thank you. I feel like I played a part in making us the worst network.”
jimmy kimmel
“ABC will air the Trump-Harris debate while Fox News will just re-air the one with Biden.”
jimmy fallon
We’ve All Got One…
So Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz might not be universally beloved after all! At least that’s the takeaway from the right-wing media’s immediate rush to interview Walz’s disgruntled brother, Jeff, who teased to the New York Post that there are deep, dark secrets that would make anyone think twice about putting his sibling a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sadly for Rupert Murdoch outlets everywhere, Jeff’s bombshell turned out to be a big, dull dud. So did the much-shared photo of a gathering of Walz relatives proclaiming their Trump support, when it turned out that a gaggle of barely related people not agreeing with Walz’s politics pales in comparison to the on-the-record roster of immediate Trump relatives, former Trump appointees, and hundreds of Republican officials loudly proclaiming their support for Kamala Harris.
“Wait, Tim Walz has a right-wing brother who posts on Facebook? He is the most relatable man in America.”
stephen colbert
[After Jeff Walz clarified that those deep, dark Tim Walz secrets begin and end with the fact that young Tim used to get carsick] “Tim Walz used to throw up in the car? That can only mean one thing, Tim Walz used to be… a child!”
stephen colbert
“Wow, that sounds really bad, because up until now, Tim Walz’s biggest scandal is that one time when it was raining and he didn’t say, ‘Well, we needed it.’
stephen colbert
Justice Delayed Is Trump’s Only Chance
Hey, remember when Donald Trump celebrated that his cronies on the Supreme Court and one unqualified goober on the Florida bench decided his whole “try to overthrow democracy” thing was no big deal? Well not so fast, as Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, not being an on-the-take right-wing ideologue installed by a corrupt former President specifically to sway the justice system in his favor, refiled the even more tightly incriminating election subversion charges in federal court last week. And similarly not-laughably-corrupt Judge Tanya Chutkan is not having any of Trump’s legal team and their increasingly farcical appeals that their client is above the law. (She also got team Trump to let slip that apparently none other than scandal-plagued bribe-aficionado Clarence Thomas has been advising them on how to get Trump off, which, if true, is breathtakingly unscrupulous, even for Thomas.)
“Trump’s lawyers entered a plea of Not Guilty, But Even if I Am Guilty It’s Not a Crime Because I Can Do Whatever I Want.”
jimmy kimmel
“The case was supposed to go to trial back in March, but the legal system, our legal system, works in mysterious ways when the defendant personally picked three of the judges on the Supreme Court.”Â
jimmy kimmel
[On the prospect of former Trump officials possibly being called as witnesses] “‘Mister Pence, show us on the doll where the former President wanted to hang you.'”
jimmy kimmel
Your Football Readiness Check
Jimmy Fallon, perhaps because tonight’s NFL kickoff game on NBC ran into his usual airtime, dedicated his monologue to inquiring as to whether viewers were, in fact, ready for some football.
“The Wall Street Journal said that the New York Jets could win it all this year. Wow. That is huge coming from the ultimate football authority, The Wall Street Journal.”Â
jimmy fallon
“During all NFL games this season, Applebees will offer 50 cent boneless wings and a bucket of cocktails. That explains their new slogan: ‘Applebees—We’ll make you feel like you’ve been tackled.'”
jimmy fallon
“Cocktails served in a bucket. Yeah. It’s for everybody who thought that the dollarita was a little too classy.”
jimmy fallon
“A man in Michigan won a competition for chugging 24 ounces of ranch in 10 seconds. Meanwhile, everyone in America who watched tonight’s game was like, ‘That’s all?'”
jimmy fallon
Potpourri
“A new study revealed that Saturday at 10:09 p.m. is the time that most people around the world are having sex. Some scientists cure diseases, others do this study.”
jimmy fallon
“McDonald’s has announced it is adding a mini-McFlurry to its menu. The way it works is, the machine is still broken, but you’re a little less disappointed.”
seth meyers
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