Thurs Night Monologues: Near-Miss With Human Decency

One might think that a horiffic mid-air collison crash between a commercial aircraft and an Army helicopter just outside our nation’s capital would pull focus away from Donald Trump for a day. Spoiler alert: it did not—mostly because he inserted himself into the story. That and Day 2 of RFK Jr.’s confirmation hearing dominated the late-night monologues Thursday. Our nightly roundup follows below.

Michael Kosta

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Thursday night’s Daily Show saw host Michael Kosta go hard after Donald Trump’s controversial press conference in which he made unsubstantiated claims about the cause of the mid-air collision, speculating wildly that the tragedy was caused by everything from previous Democratic administrations’ policies, to diversity and inclusion hiring practices, to even—well, we’ll let Kosta tell you.

“I get a little bit nervous when Trump has a strong opinion. You know, it’s never something unifying, like ‘Sunsets are beautiful,’ or ‘Love is the answer.'”

“So let’s spin the big wheel of blame to see which minorities are responsible for this crash. Who will it be this time? Black people? Lesbians? Trans Armenians?”

[On Trump claiming without any evidence that diversity hiring caused the crash] “Damn you, diversity initiatives! Why are you responsible for every historical tragedy? The fires in Los Angeles—DEI. The bridge collapse in Baltimore—DEI. The Irish potato famine—DEI. Slavery—DEI. Did you ever notice how many minorities were at slavery? It’s all DEI.”

[On Trump defending his speculation that DEI was at fault by claiming it’s just his “common sense” talking] “There you go, he has common sense! It’s just a coincidence that his common sense happens to align with his long-held prejudices.”

[On Trump finally settling on the FAA’s supposed priority hiring of people with disabilities—with an emphasis on people with dwarfism] “Dwarfism. I can’t believe it’s only Day 10 and Trump’s already this far down his list of scapegoats. He’s blown past race and gender and now he’s hitting… dwarves?”

[On Trump passing blame back to President Obama (last term ended in 2017)] “You’re blaming Obama? The guy from three presidents ago? Forget blaming a fart on your dog, this is blaming a fart on your dog that died when you were eight.”

Jimmy Kimmel

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Jimmy Kimmel was even more unsparing after Donald Trump’s press conference. Noting that all Trump had to do was express sympathy for the many families affected by the fatal crash and assure Americans that his administration would get to the bottom of it, Kimmel, addressing Trump’s barrage of accusations and deflection, stated bluntly, “But he can’t do that because he’s callus, he’s racist, he’s sexist, and most of all, he’s stupid.”

“Remember when he waited 10 minutes after the wildfires started here in L.A. before he started blaming DEI? Well I guess he learned from that lesson, because now he slept on it and then started pointing that little orange nub.”

[On Trump’s claim that his “common sense” tells him diversity is to blame] “Take it from a man who looked directly into an eclipse, you need common sense.” 

“If a straight, white, male pilot had injected a little bleach into that helicopter, none of this would have happened.”

[On the Army helicopter involved in the crash] “He hears the word Blackhawk and he’s like, ‘Well, if that hawk had been white…'”

“Blaming this on DEI is like blaming 9/11 on hummus.” 

“I think maybe he gets jealous when a disaster gets more coverage than him. He’s like, ‘I’m the biggest disaster, point that camera at me right now.'” 

Stephen Colbert

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If Kimmel was his signature mocking self over Trump’s plane crash callousness, Stephen Colbert was livid. The Late Show host began his Thursday monologue by assuring his audience that they’re not crazy—things are not normal.

Taking on Trump’s immediate snap to blaming the tragic air crash on literally everyone and everything, Colbert lamented that, despite even his slimmest hopes to the contrary, there is no difference between first and second-term Donald Trump. Excoriating Trump for ignoring the grieving families in favor of attacking his perceived enemies, Colbert, in response to Trump claiming his anti-DEI accusations are “common sense, okay?,” stated somberly, “No. Not okay. He has no common sense and no common decency.”

“Maybe after four years in the wilderness, the humiliation of a failed coup, and the criminal convictions, maybe this time we’ll see another side of him. Turns out there is no other side. He’s two-dimensional. He’s fascist Flat Stanley.”

“The horrific fires sweeping through Los Angeles? DEI in the fire department. Violence in America? DEI in the police departments. Grocery prices? DEI chickens. ‘Folks, I don’t understand why all of a sudden we have all these brown eggs, when did that start?'” 

Colbert’s scorn carried over to Trump’s immigration crackdown, with the host ripping into the president’s plan to reopen the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to warehouse thousands of non-white people, and his lies about the supposed violent and criminal nature of the people recently deported in chains to Colombia.

“Okay to all of his supporters who said, ‘He’s not gonna build camps!,’ you’re right, he’s not. He’s refurbishing camps.”

[On administration guidelines telling ICE agents to show up for immigration raids looking “TV camera-ready”] “Unfortunately they didn’t say what kind of TV and one agent arrived at the raid dressed as the Masked Singer pineapple.”

[On Colombian President Gustavo Petro refuting Trump’s claim that the deportees were all violent criminals—including the two pregnant women and more than 20 children handcuffed on the flight] “‘[Trump voice]Yeah but children can be so vicious, folks. Just a few months ago they were all going door-to-door, demanding candy. Some were vampires, some were cowboys with little guns. I saw one wicked witch and her little brother was a dinosaur.”

[On ICE agents mistakenly detaining a grandmother, mother, and two children in a Wisconsin raid because the American citizens were speaking Spanish] “Hey, ICE dummies, some Americans can speak other languages. For instance, I took seven years of Latin, are you going to deport me to ancient Rome?”

[On one ICE agent saying, “I’m sorry” to Puerto Rican-born Americans] “He would have said ‘Lo siento’ but then he would have had to deport himself.”

Seth Meyers

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After yet another day packed with chaos, outrage, and contentious confirmation hearings, Seth Meyers was in the mood for a little big picture thinking on Thursday’s A Closer Look. Taking on the flurry of executive orders flowing out of the Trump White House, Meyers counseled viewers that Trump’s strategy in these first days in office is to “intimidate and overwhelm.”

Speaking with largely joke-free bluntness, Meyers told viewers, “They haven’t presented a plan for lowering prices because they don’t have one. They’re there to dismantle the government and hand over the parts to rich guys, that’s it. They’re basically stripping the copper wire out of the walls before the oligarchs take over.”

Not that there weren’t jokes, as Meyers went after several of said rich associates, including Trump’s Health and Human Services pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whose second day of hearings saw Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders once more grilling the noted anti-vaxxer over his hawking of conspiracy theory-themed baby clothes. Whipping out his signature Sanders impression, Meyers mimicked the irascible senator, demanding, “Do you support these onesies? Back in my day, babies didn’t wear onesies, they wore a newsies cap and suspenders!”

[On Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s typically contentious CNN appearance trying to spin the president’s immediately recalled executive order freezing vital government grants and aid] “‘Wicked and pernicious purposes?’ You’re really living up to your Wormtongue reputation, aren’t you? ‘Banish this foul wizard from thy hall, my liege. He presents himself for wicked and pernicious purposes!'” 

[Accusing Trump of betraying his inflation-busting campaign pitch by surrounding himself with rich guys like Elon Musk] “Trump’s closest and most influential adviser is not a union leader or a member of the working class, it’s a guy worth $400 billion who somehow looks like he’s skydiving even when he’s standing still.”

“He looks like a dollar store rip-off of a Michael Myers mask.”

[On Trump’s HHS pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr refusing to call healthcare a human right] “People who got addicted to nicotine because of a Big Tobacco coverup still deserve healthcare as a human right. And I would think you of all people would get that, since you look like you’ve been smoking cigarettes for like a hundred years.” 

“I mean look at this guy. He’s the same color as the ceiling tiles in the teacher’s lounge.”

Taylor Tomlinson

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Now you might think that the After Midnight host devoting an entire, seven-minute monologue to an emphatic pitch for viewers to watch a biopic in which a British-famous pop star is played by a CGI monkey is an attempt escape from the horrors of our present reality. And maybe you’re right, as Tomlinson told her audience that the Robbie Williams-as-anthropomorphic-simian musical biopic Better Man is “the reset we need right now.”

But Tomlinson would really, really just like you to go out and see the movie featuring a computer-generated Robbie Williams monkey, you guys. As Tomlinson put it halfway through her unpaid promotion for the box office flop, “Half of you look confused—this is what the monologue is tonight. Get on board.”

“And I know you’re seeing that poster and you’re thinking, ‘Why is he a monkey?’ Just trust me, you get used to him being a monkey so quickly. It’s like watching a movie with Dennis Quaid in it—you forget he’s a Republican and you’re just having fun.”

“You’re telling me you don’t want to see a monkey snort cocaine? You never get to see that! Unless you work at a zoo in Florida.”

“I’m so upset that this movie didn’t make money. And not only because I know it’s going to be so much harder to sell my biopic where young Taylor is played by a falcon.”

[On an article speculating that turning white men into anthropomorphic animals may be the only way to portray them sympathetically] “It’s true, okay? If a coked-out dude yelled at me, I’d be like, ‘Okay, time to run away.’ But if a koala did it I’d probably be like, ‘Aw, he probably has demons.'”

“The premise of this film may sound weird at first, but I promise you it works. Like pineapple on pizza, or tomato juice on a plane, or a TV show about the internet during the fall of democracy.”

Jimmy Fallon

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The Tonight Show host did his own movie-promoting monologue synergy on Thursday, basing most of his jokes around the upcoming animated movie starring his first guest, Pete Davidson.

“If you’re unfamiliar with Dog Man, it’s a spinoff from Captain Underpants. If you’re unfamiliar with Captain Underpants, it’s a spinoff from Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility.”

Dog Man is about a police officer and a police dog who get hurt and, to save them, they have to be fused together. Sounds crazy but that’ll be a common surgery under RFK Jr.”

“Yeah half-man, half-dog. When they heard, Arby’s was like, ‘Crap, they’re onto us.'”

Is is his wont, Fallon continued to ditch politics pretty much completely for the rest of his one-liners.

[On oddsmakers taking bets on a possible Super Bowl proposal from Travis Kelce to Taylor Swift] “I guess it’s possible Travis proposes to Taylor but there’s a better chance of a referee proposing to Patrick Mahomes.”

[On Elon Musk reportedly sleeping in his White House-adjacent office] “Yep, he’s sleeping in a place that’s near Trump but separate. Or as it’s known, pulling a Melania.”

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