Missed Tuesday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
Stop Calling Us Fascists, You Vermin
Sometimes words fail. As Seth Meyers put it while running down Republicans’ performative outrage over the way Democrats keep quoting the transcripts of Donald Trump’s actual racist, fascist, and otherwise unhinged speeches when they call him a threat to American democracy: “I can’t believe I have to say this but there is a difference between saying true things and false things. Saying true things, about powerful people no less, is okay. Saying false things, especially about vulnerable, powerless people is wrong. I can’t believe I have to explain that.”
And if professional joke-tellers with teams of writers are at a loss to express just how deep Republican hypocrisy runs at this point, what chance do the rest of us have? This in the wake of Donald Trump and his attack-sycophants attempting to use this weekend’s arrest of a second white jackass with an AK-47 and an obsessive online hate-record to silence critics who point out that, yes, Donald Trump—the twice-impeached felon who incited a mob to try and overthrow democracy—might be someone we don’t want anywhere near the Oval Office ever again. Couple that with the beyond-laughable GOP attack plan of accusing Democrats of using ugly campaign rhetoric when Trump and his terminally charmless Veep-bot J.D. Vance are actively terrorizing an entire Ohio city by siccing their MAGA minions on Springfield’s Haitian community with racist lies about eating household pets, and it’s all non-brainwashed non-bigots can do not to scream themselves hoarse.
Meyers, breaking off halfway through his frustrated A Closer Look segment centered on Republicans’ staggering hypocrisy in the face of their own racist game plan, desperately introduced a new segment called “Seth Is So Shocked and Horrified He Has to Take a Break to Check His Fantasy Football Team.” After a cleansing few moments musing over the weekend’s stats and injury reports, Meyers snapped back to work, asking, “Wait, what was I doing? Oh right, Closer Look. F**k me.” F**k us, indeed.
“So why did this guy come for Trump? I mean, according to J.D. Vance, Trump’s V.P. and the worst thing to happen to cat ladies since feline AIDS, Democrats made him do it.”
ronny chieng
“Donald Trump’s running mate is right. We should all tone down the rhetoric and follow the example of Donald Trump. You can say many things about Donald Trump, but one thing you can’t say about Donald Trump is that this man—whose name, just to remind you, is Donald Trump—has never been anything other than a sober, cautious statesman who has steadied the national mood with his tempered rhetoric and calm, even-handed demeanor. I don’t know why you’re laughing. Because we’re talking about Donald Trump, this man, Donald Trump, who has been no less than a beacon of moderation amongst a sea of division and angst.”
seth meyers
[After Trump complains that Democrats are accusing him of being a threat to democracy—followed by him claiming Biden and Harris are “destroying the country”] “Nothing like blaming someone else for something you’re doing in the same sentence. ‘Darling, you calling me unattractive hurts my feelings. Marriage should be built on love, and I’m beginning to think you’re too fugly to understand that.'”
stephen colbert
“Yeah, liberals, stop accurately describing Trump. You’re putting him in danger when you repeat the things he says verbatim!”
ronny chieng
[After his appeal for civility is followed by a montage of Trump saying the exact same things he accuses democrats of saying] “You guys have to tell me what clips are gonna be before I come out here! Because right now, I look the fool.”
seth meyers
“Trump’s getting no help toning down the rhetoric from his flunkies, including Elon Musk, who tweeted, ‘No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala [thinky face emoji.]’ Really? Is thinky-face the right emoji for openly suggesting political violence? I’d have gone with telephone-officer-down arrow-down arrow-poop emoji. ‘Cause you’re about to get a call from the Secret Service, and are in deep, deep sh*t.”
stephen colbert
[Right before a montage of Donald Trump calling Joe Biden and Kamala Harris fascists about 10 times in as many seconds] “But J.D. Vance has a point. The left needs to stop stop calling its political opponents fascists, okay? You don’t see Donald Trump doing that all the time.”
ronny chieng
“Anyway, the point is maybe we give Trump a second mulligan. Sure, he called Democrats fascists, and sure, he called them a threat to Democracy, and sure, he incited a violent mob to ransack the Capitol, and said Mike Pence should be hanged, and promised to pardon January 6 rioters, and mocked the brutal assault on Paul Pelosi, and downplayed a kidnapping plot against the governor of Michigan, and refused to tone down his rhetoric after one of his supporters sent pipe bombs to Trump critics—wait, where was this going?”
seth meyers
[After one Trump rant sees him trailing off after calling Harris “a Marxist, communist, fascist… person “] “That last one, it felt like he ran out of words that end in ‘-ist?’ ‘She’s a Marxist, communist, fascist… dermatologist.'”
ronny chieng
“I mean, Trump has called Kamala Harris fascist so much, I’m not sure he knows her name. It’s like when you say to a coworker, ‘Oh hey, um, it’s good to see you, my fascist buddy.'”
ronny chieng
“So Trump has been saying for years that Democrats are fascist threats and vermin—which, by the way, is way worse. Using ‘vermin’ to describe your political opponents is insane. ‘Democrats need to tone down the rhetoric!’ ‘Will Trump stop saying vermin?’ ‘He caaaan’t. He just loves saying it.'”
seth meyers
“So they keep using this language, saying Democrats will destroy the country and, side note, Democrats have already won multiple times and none of that sh*t came true. Joe Biden didn’t turn the country into a fascist dictatorship. You know how I know? I’ve played that clip of him falling up the stairs about a thousand times and not only am I still a free man, he came on this show.”
seth meyers
[After Trump apologist—and CNN Senior Political Commentator—Scott Jennings accused Kamala Harris of accurately noting that Trump said he “would be a dictator on day one” of a second term] “He said that! Those are his words! She is quoting Donald Trump! Do you not understand how quoting works? Do you think your ninth-grade English teacher is the one who said, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?’ ‘Hey, you got a real way with words, teach. I can’t believe you drive a Sonata.'”
seth meyers
The Truth About Cats and Dogs
Look, the MAGA cult is going to buy into literally anything their makeup-caked leader says at this point, no matter how ugly, insane, or patently, empirically false it is, okay? We’re on Fifth Avenue and Trump just emptied a full magazine of even-for-him horrific racist lies against an immigrant community of color, and it’s looking predictably like he won’t losing a single vote because of it. And while, again, the non Kool-Aid drinkers out there can recoil in visceral revulsion and point out how bigots have been using this exact same sort of gutter slur to whip up their fellow white people against a politically convenient “other” since America was a thing, Trump and his enablers, and co-conspirators all just stand amidst the hate and division they’ve sown and smirk.
That’s what we have comedians for, right? To see the wider picture, puncture the prevailing, cynical false narratives of the powerful, and put just the right return backspin to disarm all the bold-faced lies before they do even more damage? With less than 50 days before the most telling referendum on American democracy (and white peoples’ willingness to jettison it if they don’t get their way), late-night host has become a far more vital job than ever intended. No pressure though, everybody.
“Whether or not you think the rhetoric should be toned down, it’s just not something that Trump and Vance actually believe in. I mean for the past week, the city of Springfield has been overrun with bomb threats after Trump and Vance claimed that Haitian immigrants are eating everyone’s cats and dogs, which there is no evidence of. I mean, people love posting photos of their food, okay, so we would have seen it by now.”
Ronny chieng
[After J.D. Vance admitted on CNN that he made up the whole cat-eating thing to get media attention] “So now it’s okay to just create stories, J.D. Vance, you serial couch-f**ker?”
seth meyers
“Yes, it’s true. In these divisive times, you have to create a lie just to get attention. J.D. Vance knows this personally because he’s also the victim of a hateful rumor that he had sex with a couch. And I want to repeat, he did not have sex with a couch. Because I am now hearing that, on that night, he could not perform. Yes, despite a perfectly romantic evening and an amorous, enthusiastic love seat, when the time came, J.D. Vance was E.D. Vance. His penis was softer than a throw-pillow. That night, truly, he was the La-Z-Boy.”
stephen colbert
[On Vance’s source being a Facebook post since disavowed by the women who wrote it] “What? An unsubstantiated claim on Facebook? What else are they lying about on there? Is it possible that Braden’s space-themed 10th birthday party wasn’t out of this world?”
stephen colbert
[After Vance told a rally crowd that the people he baselessly accused of eating pets came from “Haitia”] “That’s right, Haitians come from Haitia much in the way that lesbians come from Lesbia and Donald Trump comes from Dementia.”
stephen colbert
“Former President Trump said that due to issues with the U.S. Postal Service, he’s considering a lawsuit to challenge mail-in ballots. I can’t wait until after the election when Trump accuses immigrants of eating the ballots.”
jimmy fallon
[On Trump doubling down when asked to condemn the racist bomb threats his lies have spawned] “Yeah, the guy who wants everyone to believe he’s super concerned about political violence can’t even bring himself to say he’s against bomb threats. I mean, what more information are you waiting for. It’s a bomb threat. Do you need to know who the bomb was gonna vote for?”
ronny chieng
“I mean, I can’t believe this guy is saying there are very fine bomb threats on both sides.”
ronny chieng
“This isn’t a trick question, this is a layup for politicians. It’s like, ‘Do you support the troops?,’ or ‘Do you like Taylor Swift?’ Just say yes.”
ronny chieng
Two!!
Yes, for the second time this election season, a white man with a history of mental issues and a GOP-enabled access to a bullet-spraying death machine apparently planned to shoot Donald Trump. As noted, Trump and his Republican echo chamber immediately claimed that the would-be shooter was a rabid Democrat whipped up into a murderous frenzy by Kamala Harris and others pointing out the literally hundreds of things Donald Trump has actually said and done to assault American democracy. (And, you know, multiple women.)
Sadly for Trump’s truth-averse chorus, reality has a way of undermining every claim Donald Trump makes. The gunman (who, despite Trump’s hyperbolic fundraising claims, never got within 500 yards of Trump and never fired a shot) is a deeply disturbed individual whose political leanings lean in all manner of directions, with his since-scrubbed Twitter feed expressing loyalty to everyone from Trump to Bernie Sanders to Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, who he called his dream Republican ticket. Doing a little armchair diagnosis, Stephen Colbert exclaimed, “How can you support all of those people when they’re all so different? That’s like saying, ‘I’ll have the soup, and if you don’t have that I will take… sneakers. And if you don’t have that, I’ll take Vivek Ramaswamy.'”
“Hey, would you people stop trying to assassinate Donald Trump? Not only is it morally wrong, but you’re also just giving him more things to brag about. ‘They only tried to kill Abraham Lincoln once! That makes me twice as great as him!'”
ronny Chieng
“And I just want to state the obvious right off the bat. Political violence has no place in America. In fact, can I talk to all the gun owners for a second, right over here. [Addresses camera] Don’t shoot anyone. If you have even the vaguest idea that you might shoot someone, sell your gun and use that money to buy yourself a little treat. Like pancakes. IHOP. You know, maybe some pancakes, maybe get a little extra whipped cream on there. Or one of those bicycle license plates with your name on it. Or, you know what, a flute, learn to flute, learn the flute, okay? Then call your kids and tell them you traded in your guns for a flute—they might visit.”
stephen colbert
“This week a crazy person tried to hunt Donald Trump in his natural habitat, his golf course.”
ronny chieng
[On media speculation about how the gunman knew Trump would be golfing] “Yes, how could he have possibly guessed that Trump would be golfing. That’s as unforeseeable as Pitbull up in the club with some big-booty mamis.”
stephen colbert
“This guy managed to walk into Trump’s golf course and stay there undetected for 12 hours. Okay, and I don’t know if you’ve thought about this Trump, but maybe you should consider building, you know, like a wall?”
ronny chieng
[On the gunman’s many relocations over the past few years] “First clue he’s insane, he left Hawaii for Florida.”
stephen colbert
“By the way, have you noticed that the news reports are all like, ‘A harrowing near tragedy, sending chill through the nation.’ And meanwhile everyone you actually know is like, ‘Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, I saw that.'”
ronny chieng
[Speculating on motive] “Ooof, Donald Trump tweeting, ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!’ That’s dangerous. I mean, I would rather buy one of those Hezbollah pagers than tweet ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!’ I think Trump needs to stick to racism, it’s less divisive.”
ronny chieng
“The assassin this weekend was probably not a Swifite, okay. He doesn’t fit the M.O. Swifties are non-violent. They prefer to cyber-bully you until you kill yourself.”
ronny chieng
Cliptocurrency
So Donald Trump, having exhausted the shady possibilities for taking rubes’ cash in the physical realm of steaks, casinos, defrauded kids cancer charities, and fake universities, has set his sights on the wild frontier that is cryptocurrency. Launching a new, even-scammier-than-regular-cyrpto cryptocurrency enterprise under the banner World Liberty Financial, Trump and his brood are going all-in to rake in some gullible MAGA voters’ life savings before cashing out once the whole tottering house of marked cards comes crumbling down. (Despite his totally believable denials, look for Trump to take the suckers’ money and run once Truth Social finally implodes, any day now.)
Jimmy Kimmel, ever one to seize upon any new Trump family boondoggle, had some thoughts on this latest scheme from the man he calls the Commander-in-Thief.
[On Trump’s crypto company, with its deeply suspect security profile] “They say they’re legit. They’re working with top security experts in the world, including Zokyo, Fuzzland, PeckShield, and other top companies with names that sound like sex toy manufacturers.”
Jimmy kimmel
[On the World Liberty Financial financial guy and convicted drug dealer who’s somehow not the other investor who once ran a pickup site for self-proclaimed “alpha males”] “The guy behind this is a gentleman named Chase Herro, who calls himself ‘the dirtbag of the internet.’ And I don’t know if you’ve seen the internet, but there’s some stiff competition for that title.”
jimmy kimmel
“The Trumps will get paid for promoting this crypto but, according to Bloomberg, the platform isn’t owned, managed, operated, or sold by any of them. Which is something I look forward to hearing them say in four years when this gets all of them arrested.”
jimmy kimmel
“Maybe the weirdest part of the whole thing is that Trump’s youngest son Barron is part of this. He’s their ‘DeFi Visionary.’ That’s right, their visionary graduated high school three months ago. Which I have to admit is impressive. My dad would never have trusted me to run one of his criminal enterprises when I was that age.”
jimmy kimmel
Potpourri
[On Delta’s restrictive new dress code] “These rules feel like they’re trying to de-sexualize flight attendants, but, like sorry Delta, but flight attendants are inherently sexy to me. A woman in uniform who straps me into a little chair for 90 minutes? Who tells me I can’t go pee when I want to? And I’m supposed to not be horny for sky mommy?”
taylor tomlinson
“You can tell that it’s almost fall because over at LaGuardia, all the pilots have switched from hard seltzer to hard cider.”
jimmy fallon
[After a clip of a male podcaster freaking out over a new dating philosophy for women called 6-6-6]”Every time a woman has standards for herself, a male podcaster gets his wings.”
Taylor Tomlinson
“For any guys panicking right now, I don’t think we’re in any danger of tilting the playing field any time soon. I feel like every straight couple I see in L.A. is made up of a woman who just got cast in a Victoria’s Secret commercial and a man who just got diamond rank in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.”
taylor Tomlinson
“The standards for women have always been high. There’s even an unspoken 6-6-6 for us. We get six minutes a day to ourselves, we get to eat six calories, and then we get called a six.”
taylor tomlinson
[On Trump accusing Kamala Harris of only trouncing him in their debate because of collusion with ABC, claiming she seemed “awfully familiar with the questions”] “‘Yeah, she seemed awfully familiar with those questions. It really seemed as if she knew they’d ask about immigration, inflation, and the economy. Wait a second, hold on—come to think of it, I knew they were gonna ask about that stuff! My God, did I collude with ABC News?'”
stephen colbert
“The FDA just approved a sleep apnea detection feature on the new Apple Watch. As opposed to the old sleep apnea detection feature, your wife rolling over and slapping you.”
jimmy fallon
“Welcome to the Emmy Award-winning Daily Show. I’m Emmy Award winner Ronny Chieng, please address me as such. “
Ronny chieng
“Police in Ohio said that an eight-year-old girl drover herself to Target and went shopping. And here’s the most shocking part, she left without spending over 300 dollars.”
jimmy fallon
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