Thurs Night Monologues: Trump Fails the Village People Audition

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.

Will Cosplay for Votes

After President Biden—who is not running for reelection—stumbled through a Zoom call where he sort of but not really referred to Trump supporters as “garbage,” Trump surrogates have leapt on the gaffe like a bunch of performative little crybabies who thought the description hit a little to close to the bone. Or something.

Donald Trump himself went whole hog, naturally, donning blue collar drag once more as he did a photo op in a Trump-branded garbage truck, stumbling unsteadily to the passenger seat, and keeping his unflatteringly orange reflective vest on for the subsequent campaign rally. It was yet another condescending PR stunt that could only impress the most gullibly sycophantic MAGA minions (Sean Hannity loved it), a tactic that several late-night hosts were quick to unravel—when not just mocking the hell out of how Donald Trump looked like a lost member of his favorite, gay-positive 1970’s rock band.

As Seth Meyers put it, “It’s like an audition for the Village People before they decided to go with six. ‘Yeah garbage man, we’re just not feeling it’.”

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“First he dressed up as a McDonald’s worker, then a garbage man. He dances to “YMCA.” It’s like he’s trying to create his own version of the Village People.”

jimmy fallon

[On Trump implying the exact same insult he accuses Joe Biden of using] “Okay so you dressed up as a garbage man because you say Biden called your supporters garbage, and you’re saying they’re not garbage but you’re taking out the garbage which is someone else, but you wont tell us who it is. And also no one should call anyone garbage but you just did because you’re the garbage man, so in other words, the perfect metaphor.”

ronny chieng

[On a gushing Sean Hannity promising Fox News viewers the sight of Trump playing garbage man will be remembered for a long time] “I mean it might, but not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

seth meyers

“Oh yes, ‘epic, ‘iconic,’ all of those things. Washington crossed the Delaware, Trump hitched a ride in a garbage truck.”

jimmy kimmel

[On the widely-memed photo of an even-more-orange than usual Trump waving his arms around in his pristine orange garbage man vest] “By the way, for anyone thinking of dressing up as Trump for Halloween, you’ve got to be really careful at this point because it’s getting kind of close to blackface over here.”

ronny chieng

“I do have to say the vest really brings out the color of his mouth.” 

jimmy kimmel

“It looks like the Oompa-Loompas’ union boss.”

jimmy fallon

“The not-so-great pumpkin got a head start on Halloween yesterday.” 

jimmy kimmel

“He went to his rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin as, I want to say, a traffic cone that’s also a sex doll?”

stephen colbert

“That vest will come in handy when he’s on the side of the highway picking up trash with the other inmates.” 

jimmy kimmel

“You know when this dude first ran for President back in 2015, we were all guilty of making jokes about how he looked like a traffic cone. But then we came to our senses, we started focusing on what a unique threat his policies were to this country. With that said, f**k me does he look like a traffic cone in this picture.”

seth meyers
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“And then this lunatic decides to stay in the garbage costume for the whole duration of his speech. Like a four-year-old who wants to wear his costume to school.”

jimmy kimmel

[On a photo’s unfortunate framing of a journalist’s fuzzy boom mic] “Also, not his fault where they put the microphone but he looks like a traffic cone with a Wookie’s dick.”

seth meyers

“How is this real life? He doesn’t look like he’s running for President, he looks like he’s at a Halloween party at an assisted living facility.”

seth meyers

[On Trump closing his garbage truck presser by telling the audience, “I hope you liked this garbage truck”] “That’s an inspiring closing message. ‘I hope you enjoy this garbage truck, by which I mean my campaign. It has been a true honor and a bone-chilling dumpster fire.'”

stephen colbert

[On Trump staggering unsteadily while trying to open the truck door] “Looks like Trump is taking walking lessons from Rudy Giuliani.”

stephen colbert

[On Trump being unable to hear reporters’ questions] “It’s almost like holding a press conference from inside a running truck on an active tarmac was a dumb idea.”

stephen colbert

[On Biden’s garbage-gaffe, which the media has focused on more than any actual issue in the final days of the campaign] “Thank you Joe. I do understand you didn’t mean everybody, just the guy who said the one thing, but yeah. And if there are any aides of his watching right now—If he attempts to talk in the next four days, please deploy some tactical soft serve to this area, okay?”

stephen colbert

“Trump does not have a genuine interest in the lives of working people, otherwise he might care even a little bit about their basic needs. Instead he bragged about refusing to pay overtime that sanitation workers and fast food employees depend on, just to name a few. He laughed with the world’s richest man about firing workers who strike with their unions. You know, like the ones coal miners and auto workers belong to. Under his presidency, corporate profits soared while manufacturing jobs declined and three million Americans lost their health insurance. He once blurted out, and this is real, I just don’t want a poor person running the economy. The people closest to him quickly learned he’s a fraud. His former military officials have called him a fascist. His former lawyers have called him a unique and dangerous threat to American democracy. People who were his best friends for decades have called him a liar, a coward, and a con man. His own Vice President said he should never be President again, and his Secretary of State, his Security Adviser, and his Chief of Staff have called him an idiot, a dope, and a moron with the intelligence of a kindergartner. Which is why he dresses like a five-year-old trick-or-treating after dark.”

seth meyers

Women to the Rescue—Again

Look, nobody’s saying American men as a group are a bunch of insecure, woman-hating man-babies so easily swayed by hollow sloganeering and gay panic that any demagogue who can spot a mark from a hundred paces can win their support by playing up to pathetic throwback ideas about “real men.” OK, some people are saying that.

But Democratic campaign operatives are really leaning into the idea that American women are going to be the true deciding force in a campaign between a competent female public servant and a guy who kept company with one of the most infamous sex predators of all time. Oh, and who’s been credibly accused of sexual assault and harassment by scores of women. And who’s been found legally liable for rape. And who routinely belittles any strong women who don’t like him as “low IQ” and “nasty.” And whose male supporters routinely call for the repeal of the 19th Amendment that gave the women the right to vote. And whose campaign strategy this time around is based on the misogynist fever-dreams of a right-wing evangelical think tank whose entire plot is to strip women’s rights and protection everywhere from their workplace to their doctor’s office.

To that end, Democrats are running a series of ads targeted at women apparently stuck in relationships with men who smugly assume that their wives and partners will simply vote how ever their manly man-man says. (There’s also a dude-targeted ad telling said he-men that it’t totally okay to pretend to be a Trump-loving misogynist to your bros while secretly voting for Harris for the sake of your wives and daughters, which suggests an intimate familiarity with male psychology guys should be genuinely embarrassed about.)

With record-breaking early voting showing a 10-point gap between women and men , a 19-point advantage for Harris among women, and Trump’s abysmal record on, well, literally everything relating to women, it’s looking once more like it’s up to the ladies to out-vote their easily manipulated hubbies and save American democracy. (Of course, when you only poll white women, that gap narrows, but that’s a whole other slice of American pathology.)

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“Look, I don’t know why Trump does so badly with women. I mean sure, he shredded their reproductive rights or whatever. But he’s only been accused of groping 26 of them. Oh wait, sorry, what’s that? There was a new one last week? Okay, 27. What’s that? There was a new one yesterday? Look I can understand why no one heard about it, okay? The media had a big garbage truck story to cover.” 

ronny chieng

“Of course the huge gender gap in this election has led to people asking questions on social media like, ‘Can my husband find out who I voted for?’ No he can’t. But if that’s really a concern, the two of you should just sit down and while he’s watching TV maybe you look up your old college boyfriend on Facebook. I hear he’s a professor of poetry at Sarah Lawrence and makes his own furniture.”

stephen colbert

[On Trump, still in his little garbage man costume, telling a crowd he’ll protect women “whether they like it or not”] “You know there’s a name for when you take care of a woman who doesn’t want you to take care of her. It’s called kidnapping.” 

ronny chieng

“Now I know that seems weird and creepy there. But I promise you, it sounded much sweeter in his wedding vows.”

stephen colbert

“And there is no situation where ‘if you like it or not’ is a good sales pitch. ‘Unlimited shrimp, whether you like it or not!’ would be a pass for me.” 

ronny chieng
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“This is how hard it is to to be a woman in America. You’re just walking down the street, minding your own business, and a man dressed like but not an actual garbage man says he’s going to protect you whether you like it or not.” 

seth meyers

[On a viral campaign where women are traveling to battleground states to hang notes telling women their husbands can’t see their vote in public restrooms] “Damn, that is the most wholesome reason to visit a truck stop bathroom. Just imagine how disappointed you’d be seeing one of them coming out of a glory hole.”

ronny chieng

[On the template version of a domineering husband in the Harris ads] “Take that, Kirkland signature brand conservative husband. Your wife’s not voting for public domain eagle flag.”

stephen colbert

[On the male-centric version of the “nobody knows how you voted” ads] “I get the woman ad but this ad is ridiculous, okay? No real man is gonna prioritize his wife and daughter over a guy with his own customized garbage truck.”

ronny chieng

[On a commentator claiming “women will crawl over broken glass to break through the glass ceiling”] “Okay so there was glass on the floor before they broke the glass ceiling. So then where did the broken glass come from if the ceiling… why is everyone in America so bad at metaphors?”

ronny chieng

[After a clip of Trump at his nearly all-white rally insulting Kamala Harris’ abilities under pressure by calling her a “cracker”] “You’ve got to be careful, you keep talking like that, they might vote for her.” 

jimmy kimmel

Desperation Is a Stinky Cologne

While this election remains nauseatingly close, some polls suggest that Kamala Harris is pulling away. What’s more convincing, however, is how sweatily Trump and his surrogates are reaching for literally anything they can smear the Democratic ticket with like so many January 6 MAGA rioters with their own feces. (Trump and his cronies’ flood of tweets already claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania give a taste of just how bad their internal polling looks.)

[On the hysterical, ridiculous anti-trans, anti-Harris ads than ran during The World Series] “Also what do you mean she wants transgender operations for everybody? Who’s listening to that and believes him? Who thinks Harris’ platform is, ‘Everybody’s switchin’!'”

seth meyers

[On Trump defensively telling his rally crowd, “I’m not Hitler”] “‘No, I’m not Hitler. I wanted to be but this year my staff said you should be a garbage man.'”

stephen colbert

[On disgraced former Fox News figure Tucker Carlson claiming Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz “looks gay”] “Well if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle fierce.”

jimmy kimmel

“I just find it very interesting coming from a man whose screen saver is a close-up of Vladimir Putin’s nipples.”

jimmy kimmel

Potpourri

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“Yeah I love Halloween. It’s that special night when you can go to a bar and see Beetlejuice grind with an Australian breakdancer.”

jimmy fallon

“In America, today was the environmental and public health disaster known as Halloween. Where kids dress up in single-use costumes and eat 40 pounds of sugar because 500 years ago people were scared of the dark or something.”

ronny chieng

[On the World Series-losing Yankees’ disastrous, error-filled inning] “They’re saying it’s the most embarrassing thing to happen to New York since Rudy Giuliani.”

jimmy kimmel

“And now we wait for the Yankees’ legal challenges to play out in court before we can certify the results. Do you hear how crazy that sounds?”

jimmy kimmel

“If you truly love the Bible, you’re not supposed to profit off it. The only reason that’s not one of the commandments is because God assumed it was f**king implied.” 

seth meyers

[On the annual White House trick-or-treat celebration] “This year’s theme was Hallow-Read. And if you think that theme is nerdy, wait ’til December for Merry Christ-Math.”

stephen colbert

“I love the Marathon. It’s the only time you can walk down the street wrapped in aluminum foil, covered in your own poop and go, ‘I’m a winner.'”

jimmy fallon

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