Missed Wednesday’s late-night monologues? We’ve got you covered with our round-up of the night’s best laughs from across the dial.
Not Shaking the ‘Weird’ Thing Anytime Soon
With all-star Democratic pinch-hitter candidate Kamala Harris dominating both the news cycle and the polls since her entry into the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump and his team are scrambling. Scrambling to counter the runaway popularity of Harris and her universally lauded Vice Presidential pick of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is proving as popular as Trump’s would-be Veep J.D. Vance proves incapable of fending off rumors that he’s really into living room furniture. Scrambling to come up with sad, ludicrous excuses why Harris’ rally crowds make Trump’s look like the dwindling cult following of a guy not invited back to the venues he’s stiffed in the past. And sweatily scrambling to counter the growing and thoroughly accurate perception that the MAGA movement and everyone in it are deeply, disturbingly weird.
Several hosts plucked out some choice Trump-adjacent weirdos for public scrutiny on Wednesday. The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic plunged into the leaked Project 2025 training videos from the GOP’s planned Christian nationalist, authoritarian plot to turn the government “from a neutral bureaucracy to a conservative Death Star,” which had been kept secret from the public. Possibly because everyone involved in it (29 of 36 of whom are former Trump administration officials) is so freaking weird. Including the woman who warns that climate change is inextricably linked to population control(?), another whose claims about being “a normal American woman” come yoked to a breathless screed including every anti-“woke” slur in the Republican playbook, and a prodigiously bearded former Department of Homeland Security official(?) in full cassock and prominent cross who Lydic states looks less like a government official and more like “the last thing a Russian Czar sees before he’s thrown into the back of a carriage.”
Stephen Colbert, meanwhile, zeroed in on Trump press secretary, former Ultimate Fighting Championship spokesperson, and “live-action Mucinex man” Steven Cheung, whose abusively pugnacious response to even the tiniest Trump critics is, let’s just call it completely weird. A few also dipped back into the Mike Pence files. Just because you leave the weirdo circus doesn’t mean the weirdo face paint ever truly wipes off.
[On Trump’s repeated denials that he’s even heard of the poll poison that is Project 2025] “Okay, now I’m suspicious. ‘Cause the last time Trump said ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he was talking about Stormy Daniels. So, did Trump f**k project 2025?”
desi lydic
“These are internal training videos for people who want to join a new Trump government in the hopes of someday being kicked off Dancing With the Stars.”
desi lydic
[On former Trump official Katie Sullivan’s word-salad attacks on pronouns and the like] “Oh my God, is every sentence gonna be like this? ‘I’m sitting in a chair, or as the left would call it, a quad leg-abled, up-cycled, non-binary, wood-based booty ally.'”
desi lydic
[On another former Trump official named Bethany Kozma linking climate change with population control] “No, no I don’t. I don’t think of population control when I think of climate change, you weirdo. I think of forest fires and Smokey Bear and his tight little bear bod, like a normal American woman.”
desi lydic
[On another –you guessed it—former Trump official illegally urging Project 2025 not to leave a subpoena-vulnerable paper trail when discussing controversial policy] “This video might actually bring Project 2025 to a screeching halt, because I don’t care how badly you want to ban abortion, if you have to physically meet someone for coffee to do that, ugh, f**k it, let ‘em have their rights.”
desi lydic
[On conservative priest and—you know it’s coming—former Trump official Alexei Woltornist urging Project 2025 acolytes to only to talk to right-wing media] “Anyone would remember meeting this guy. You’re telling me [Trump]’s got a nickname for Joe Biden but not libertarian Gandalf?”
desi lydic
“So this guy worked in the Trump administration. Can you imagine how often Mike Pence tried to confess to him? ‘Father, today I saw a pear and had impure thoughts.'”
desi lydic
[On Trump spokesman Steven Cheung accusing the Harris/Walz campaign of criticizing Trump’s disastrous Elon Musk interview—on official Harris/Walz campaign letterhead—by calling them “f**king cowards” for not signing their names] “That is a press secretary apparently unfamiliar with the concept of a press release. ‘And now Pringles released a statement saying once I pop, I am not going to be able to stop, but they don’t put anyone’s name on it? Does Mr. Pringles even exist, or is he A.I., too? Hey Pringle, meet me in the alley after work, you high-sodium cuck!'”
stephen colbert
[On the Trump campaign—all evidence pointing to Cheung—responded to questions about why Trump was slurring his words in the interview by posting, “Must be your sh*tty hearing. Get your ears checked out.”] “Even for the Trump campaign, that’s an unusually hostile response. ‘Oh you wanna hear about jobs? I had a job from your mom last night.'”
stephen colbert
“Since when does a cellphone make you sound like your dentures are banging against your tongue?”
seth meyers
“Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a recent interview that he cannot endorse former President Trump because Trump wanted him to overturn the 2020 election. And he can’t endorse Kamala Harris because that’s third base and he’s married.”
Seth meyers
Too Weird Even for Trump?
Colbert also chimed in on those J.D. Vance rumors—which he admonished viewers in no uncertain terms is not true. Even if Vance is so weird, it might as well be. With the Hillbilly Elegy author and noted Trump flip-flopper Vance proving a dragging anchor on the toxic Trump 2024 cruise liner, Trump has begun to show signs of souring on his running mate, proving that weird plus weird equals “maybe I can replace him with Mike Lindell.”
“Whereas, no matter who the audience is, JD Vance is always a sweaty weirdo who it’s easy to believe boned a La-Z-Boy.”
stephen colbert
“According to a new report, former President Trump is furious at his campaign staff for letting him make the ‘terrible’ decision of picking J.D. Vance as his VP. Trump regrets pairing up with Vance. He’s like, ‘This is always why I sign a pre-nup.'”
jimmy fallon
[On a recent Vance scandal involving former failed business AppHarvest] “A damning report links J.D. Vance to horrific work conditions. Those conditions, working with J.D. Vance.”
stephen colbert
[On Vance stating he’s “not worried” about Trump hanging out with literal Nazi Nick Fuentes, who, among other hateful nonsense, has attacked Vance’s wife, who is of Indian descent] “Uh, maybe you should be. ‘He hugs my wife, says she’s so beautiful, and they’re taking a salsa dancing class together. Just yesterday he said to me, ‘Hey J.D., why don’t you go buy me and your wife some chicken wings and take your time, no rush coming back.'”
stephen colbert
The Weird Is Coming From Inside the Campaign
Nominate a weirdo, and you’re going to have weirdos all the way down. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Donald Trump is the poisoned font from whence all this conspiratorial, bigoted, authoritarian-flavored weirdness flows.
“I love when news organizations use words to describe Trump that Trump has definitely never used. ‘My shift in fortunes has been a real whipsaw. My current position is precarious and I am quite perturbed.’ In reality, all he’s saying is ‘F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k.'”
seth meyers
“If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s not a policy guy. He’s more of a boobs guy. Or a ‘She’ll have a salad’ guy. Or a ‘Babe, I swear I have a latex allergy’ guy.”
desi lydic
[On Trump’s repeated assertion that other countries are emptying their insane asylums to flood the border] “By the way, Trump definitely thinks they’re coming from insane asylums because he heard they were seeking asylum and inside his smooth, chug-a-lug brain, he doesn’t have room for the idea that a word can mean two things.”
seth meyers
[On Trump and fellow authoritarian weirdo Musk repeatedly referring to Trump’s unhinged tweets as “epic”] “Oh my God, they sound like eighth graders watching skateboard fails on YouTube.”
seth meyers
“By the way, I know it’s supposedly called X now, but f**k him, it’s Twitter.”
seth meyers
“Not everyone is as big a fan of how Trump is running his campaign. Take former Trump critic, turned Trump ally, turned Trump critic, turned Trump ally, turned Trump critic, Nikki Haley.” [Clip of Haley, who Trump famously called a “birdbrain,” advising Trump to stop personal attacks on Kamala Harris] “Yes, racist sexist attacks calling her dumb is not how your’e gonna beat Kamala Harris. That’s how you beat Nikki Haley, birdbrain.”
stephen colbert
“In a new interview, former Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said that former President Trump needs to make a serious shift and ‘quit whining about Vice President Kamal Harris.’ And Trump must have listened, because now he’s whining about Nikki Haley.”
seth meyers
And Don’t Get Us Started on RFK Jr.
Seth Meyers missed a lot while he was away.
“We missed the RFK bear story when we were on our Olympics break and we haven’t had time to circle back to it. And we’re not going to circle back to it. Too much is happening. But that’s how wild the last three weeks have been. A Kennedy running for president picked up a bear carcass off the road so he could skin it and keep it in his refrigerator and then he put it in the trunk of his car and brought it to dinner at Peter Luger’s steakhouse, dumped the carcass in Central Park, and staged it to look like a bicycle accident causing a police investigation and media frenzy that led to a decade-long mystery, all because he forgot he had a flight to catch and didn’t have time to take the dead bear home. Although I don’t know why he didn’t just try to stuff it in the overhead compartment, because that’s not any weirder than what he actually did. And the only reason why we found out about any of this is because he confessed to Roseanne Barr, who was as shocked as the rest of us. Anyway, like I said, we don’t have time to circle back to it.”
seth meyers
Potpourri
“According to a new study, cigarette smoking in America is the lowest that it’s been in 80 years. The study was funded by the world-renowned Institute of Vaping Is Actually Healthy and Cool as Hell.”
jimmy Kimmel Live guest host jeff goldblum
“The Bank of England has raised more than one million dollars for several British charaties by auctioning off some of the first bank notes to feature King Charles, who’s also a British charity.”
seth meyers
“Ahead of the Democratic National Convention, Kamal Harris and Tim Walz are taking a bus tour together through Pennsylvania. Yeah, and this is interesting, it’s the same bus that Democrats threw President Biden under.”
jimmy fallon
“Former President Trump has supposedly decided to return to the social media platform X as a strategic move to fight his sinking poll numbers. All right, but it’s not what it used to be, dude. That’s like going back to your high school and finding out it’s a Big Lots now.”
seth meyers
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