The still-roaring Los Angeles wildfires dominated the late-night world on Thursday. Jimmy Kimmel and Taylor Tomlinson remained dark as their respective crews face the worst fires in that area’s history, while the New York-based hosts all took aim at the undirected blasts of misguided blame coming from Donald Trump and his allies. Here’s our round-up of the night’s best lines from across the dial.
Seth Meyers
As he did yesterday, Seth Meyers kicked off his show Thursday with a heartfelt statement of support and empathy for residents in the wildfires’ path and those firefighters selflessly putting their lives on the line to protect others. He then inevitably segued into barely concealed rage-jokes about how the incoming president is addressing the catastrophe.
Meyers, echoing a growing sentiment among late-night hosts in the weeks before Donald Trump actually takes office again, admitted, “I’m so over this guy, I’m running out of clever retorts,” before introducing what he claims is his new segment entitled simply, “SHUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!” (That’s eight followed by nine “u”s, for those counting.) While defending himself against those MAGA faithful accusing Trump critics of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a comically wild-eyed Meyers said, “that’s like accusing Rick on The Walking Dead of having Zombie Derangement Syndrome.”
To back up his exasperation, Meyers fact-checked Trump for suggesting that water conservation has led to a firefighters’ water shortage (it hasn’t), that California Governor Gavin Newsom prioritized the lowly smelt over available water thanks to his refusal to ratify the “water restoration declaration” (does not exist), and blaming President Biden and FEMA for poor water pressure in afflicted areas. (To which Meyers noted how water pressure drops when, say, hundreds of fire trucks hook their hoses up to fight fires in a burning neighborhood, and that federal and state water policies have nothing to do with each other.)
As for that “water restoration declaration,” Meyers joked that the made-up name “sounds like a name a bunch of stoners would make up for their bong.”
Desi Lydic
Over on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic also fought to douse certain politicians leaky blame cannon concerning the decidedly non-partisan California wildfires. First going after Trump’s anti-smelt attacks, Lydic joked that the president-elect turned to fish conservation rather than climate change as a culprit because “smelt” has two fewer syllables, while mocking Republican senators’ glassy, nodding approval of Trump’s baseless statements as the behavior of guys who make her change cars on the subway.
Lydic then played multiple clips of various commentators putting the blame of this wind-whipped, climate-caused tinderbox of a disaster not on fish, but on women and minorities.
After Laura Ingraham and others mocked California’s hiring equality standards for beleagured and heroic firefighters being unable to immediately stamp out the area’s worst wildfires in history by pointing out that several high-raking LAFD positions are held by women, Lydic asked (over a picture of one of the Paw Patrol), “Women can’t be firefighters? They let dogs be firefighters!” She also mocked one commentator’s telling obsession with firefighters’ physical attributes by noting, “This guy’s talking about firefighters like the only thing they do is pose for sexy calendars. ‘Not muscularity, not size, not girth, not cut or uncut…'”
Lydic then took a look at the state funeral of the late President Jimmy Carter. Noting that all five living presidents were in attendance at Thursday’s service, Lydic could only marvel, “If you measure a life by the VIP guest list at your funeral, then Jimmy Carter was a f**kin’ pimp!” Pimp or no, Carter’s funeral did put one incoming head of state in uncomfortably close proximity to literally every political opponent and former supporter he’s ever defamed as if they were a small endangered California fish.
Doing some onscreen telestrator work, Lydic traced arrows from Trump to his seat-mates, showing which ones he he’s tried to put in prison, accused of murder, tried to murder, accused of being a secret Muslim terrorist, accused of pretending to be Black, tried to overthrow with a violent coup, and/or cheated on with a porn star.
Stephen Colbert
After his own sincere appeal for people to pray for (and give money to) victims of the wildfires, Colbert segued with the statement, “Now in times like these, it’s hard to know what to do. But it’s pretty easy to know what not to do.”
That may have seemed like a lead-in to jokes about Donald Trump—and it was, although not about Trump’s wildfire blame-gaming so much as his still-smoldering obsession with invading Greenland. (Colbert did mock online betting site Polymarket for laying odds on when the fires will be put out with dubbed-over Hindenburg footage of the famous commentator crowing that he’d just won his parlay on the infamous blimp disaster.)
Noting how Trump’s Greenland mania is even more single-minded than in his first term, Colbert conjured up an all-caps statement from Greenland’s territorial owner Denmark, reading, “ØØØØ MYUIN GJÆØØD WÆ’RE SO SKRAEÜD!” (Umlaut humor, everyone!) Colbert also joked about Trump’s go-to plan to pressure Denmark with tariffs, noting the U.S.’ dependence on Danish imports of goods like pig meat, baked goods, and petroleum, exclaiming, “But that’s the entire menu at Denny’s!”
Shifting to President Carter’s president-packed funeral, Colbert marveled at the, well, Marvel-like collection of political heavy hitters in the pews. Calling the gathering the “Marvel Presidential Universe,” Colbert ran down the avenging roster of “Captain Saxophone, Madame Popular Vote, the Invisible WMD, Mr. Netflix, When We Harley We Quinn, Staredevil, Doctor Dumbass, and Doug.”
Colbert, like Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, also had fun with former president George W. Bush’s playful tummy-punch greeting to successor Barack Obama, with Colbert dusting off his Bush impression to have Bush promise, “You’re lucky this is a funeral, or that would’ve been a sack-tap.”
Colbert also reminded viewers of the coming changes at Facebook, where founder Mark Zuckerberg has reversed course on fact-checking the social media site, something Trump and other purveyors of misinformation have long demanded.
Facebook’s relaxed hate speech rules, which now allow women be referred to as “household objects or property” allowed Colbert to engage in some childish insults of his own, pulling up a picture of the newly permed Zuckerberg for target practice. “He looks like if your Jewish aunt was Jack Harlow,” Colbert joked, followed by saying the CEO looks like “your guidance counselor who called you into his office to tell you he’s getting a divorce.” Sadly for Zuckerberg, there’s just no way to fact-check whether those insults are true.
Jimmy Fallon
The Tonight Show host was sent scrambling for guests on Thursday after scheduled stars Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz cancelled their joint appearance when the New York premiere of their film Back in Action was sidelined by the California fires. Fallon quickly bumped up MSNBC’s Willie Gesit to fill in with a discussion of those same wildfires, leaving Fallon to joke about anything but.
On the Supreme Court hearing arguments about the proposed TikTok ban, Fallon noted, “It’s expected to be the first time a Supreme Court justice has said the words ‘Skibidi Toilet.'” On Sony introducing new smell-based gaming technology, Fallon quipped that Nintendo abandoned the same project since “they didn’t think people would want to smell two plumbers who work in the sewers.” And he predicted the the upcoming JC Penney-Forever 21 merger would bring us a Baby Gap in nine months.
Fallon did delve into current events, namely the Jimmy Carter state funeral, where a photo of Donald Trump appearing to doze off next to his wife elicited Fallon’s joke about the reported instability of the incoming first family, “That’s actually the first time Trump’s slept next to Melania in years.” He also noted that the long-absent Melania’s appearance was a shock, since everyone “thought Trump’s plus-one would be Elon Musk.”
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Gi Trump!
I meant “Go Trump! “