The real world caused a late scratch for two late-night hosts on Wednesday, as the raging Los Angeles wildfires saw L.A.-based Jimmy Kimmel and Taylor Tomlinson forced to cancel their broadcasts. For the New York contingent, Wednesday’s monologues continued to pick apart Donald Trump’s Tuesday press conference. Here’s our round-up of the night’s best lines from across the dial.
Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers continues to use his “A Closer Look” segment to bring a little context and nuance to the nightly round of inevitable Trump zingers. The comedy fallout from Donald Trump’s Tuesday press conference (in which the incoming Republican president threatened to invade [checks list] Greenland, Panama, Mexico, and/or Canada) has largely focused on the outrageous nature of Trump’s rhetoric, which, to be fair, is pretty outrageous. Meyers, however, took time on Wednesday to at least examine how Trump’s punchline-baiting statements obscure bigger issues.
“It will not happen. None of this will happen,” an already exhausted-looking Meyers stated regarding Trump’s invade-our-allies plans, even as he explained how this all serves to distract the very distract-able American public, media, and late-night monologue-sphere from what he’s doing. Pointing to Trump’s campaign claims that all he cared about was making groceries cheaper for average American voters, Meyers scolded those focusing on the Greenland business and other “insane bullsh*t” rather than how Trump has abandoned his economic promises immediately upon winning the election.
In a segment more pointed than zinger-rich, Meyers urged viewers to look beyond Trump’s press conference obsessions with windmills, poor water pressure, how electric heat makes you itchy, and randomly renaming bodies of water to instead get riled up at the “billionaire oligarchs” using Trump’s headline-grabbing antics to “loot the government.”
He also called out Democrats like Chuck Schumer for sounding like a “mom complaining about how you never call” in blaming voters for ignoring all the good things the Biden administration has done instead of joining Meyers in pointing out how, for example, Trump just sent his son to scope out Greenland’s frozen landscape and excitedly speculate on the resources a U.S. takeover might find. Showing a clip of Don Jr pushing his dad’s “Bond villain” scheme, Meyers noted, “When a white man shows up talking about your gold and diamonds, what could possibly go wrong?”
Desi Lydic
Over at The Daily Show, Desi Lydic also used Trump’s presser as the starting point for a wider takedown of his agenda. “He’s not even on America’s payroll yet, but he’s already causing chaos,” Lydic fake-marveled. “What a workaholic.”
Echoing Meyers’ weary exasperation at the prospect of four more years of trying to find the funny in all of this, Lydic laid into Trump’s Greenland comments, noting “It’s the kind of nonsense nobody should take seriously. But Trump said it, so I guess we’re doing this.” Pointing out how even the Trump apologists on Fox News and in the GOP ranks sound a little embarrassed backing up Trump’s expansionist fantasy, Lydic noted, “Can you imagine how exhausting it is to treat every one of Trump’s dumb ideas like it’s a work of art?”
Moving on to preview how a second Trump administration will cope with inevitable catastrophes like the raging wildfires in Los Angeles, Lydic didn’t sound particularly optimistic. Maybe because Trump used his social media account to throw blame for the natural disaster on vocal Trump critic and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who Trump referred to as “Gavin Newscum.”
“In the midst of chaos, Donald Trump is taking action by opening up the strategic nickname reserves,” Lydic joked, even as she played a more inspiring local news clip of actor Steve Guttenberg helpfully directing rescue efforts in his smoldering neighborhood. Adopting a newscaster’s cadence to follow up that surprising development, Lydic could only state, “Officials have warned that now that the fire has reached Steve Guttenberg, it’s only two degrees from Kevin Bacon.”
Stephen Colbert
Speaking of the high/low roads one might choose when addressing a major disaster impacting millions of your fellow citizens, Stephen Colbert (like Seth Meyers) didn’t even dignify Trump’s wildfire indignity with a response in his Wednesday monologue, instead kicking off with a somber tribute to the “resourceful and kind” people of Los Angeles and revealing a QR code for those looking to donate money and assistance.
Not that Colbert is unfamiliar with that low road, as he segued with, “And speaking of natural disasters—Donald Trump.” Colbert, too, was feeling the preemptive Trump fatigue, pantomiming a pulled muscle after breaking out his Trump impression for the first time in a month. But still, a gig’s a gig, and Colbert warned that Trump’s pre-inaugural press conference (where he claimed Trump “got behind the podium at Mar-a-Lago, cranked up the crazy and then ripped off the knob”) is just the beginning.
“The next four years are gonna be a thick stew to choke down,” Colbert cautioned, pointing out that Trump floated his Greenland scheme the first time around, and that what was considered his craziest idea in the first administration is his first thought out of the gate for his second. Pointing out that The Late Show, like unofficial Trump family envoy/advance invasion scout Donald Trump Jr, actually visited Greenland several years ago, Colbert noted, “And then I left because it does not belong to me. That’s how that works.” (He also joked that Don Jr’s snow obsession in visiting the country may be a case of him mistaking actual and colloquial terms for “snow.”)
The sideshow surrounding this initial salvo in Trump’s (for now) war of words on a sovereign nation continued, with Colbert playing the clip of Fox News host Rosanna Scotto bafflingly supporting Trump’s plan by claiming that President Harry Truman also tried to buy Greenland—in 1867. Mocking this dutiful bout of blindly ahistorical Trump cheerleading, Colbert could only marvel that, per Scotto, Truman’s parallel thought (which never really happened) occured “20 years before [Truman] was born.” Colbert also was puzzled at Trump’s apparent shift when it comes to the inviolability of national borders in calling the U.S.-Canada border “artificially drawn” as part of his pitch to make that country the newest American state. “Hey. Dummy,” a smiling Colbert wound up, “All the lines on maps are artificially drawn.”
Jimmy Fallon
If there’s one host who’s going to mine a Trump speech for its ready zingers, it’s The Tonight Show‘s Jimmy Fallon. Sticking with Trump’s twin threats to invade Panama and Greenland, Fallon quipped, “To handle Greenland, Trump will send the army. And to deal with the huge canal, Trump will send his proctologist.” Whether this is a cheap shot at Donald Trump’s rump or a trenchant commentary on the seriousness and practicality of Trump’s proposals, only history can decide.
Sticking with Trump family news, Fallon also chimed on in Amazon’s upcoming documentary about First Lady-in-waiting Melania Trump. Specifically, Fallon took aim at the widely reported schism between the Trumps, with the host joking, “The big winner here is Trump because now he can watch the documentary and convince Melania he read her memoir.” He also noted that while Amazon and the retail giant’s Trump-friendly CEO Jeff Bezos are paying upwards of $40 million for the Brett Ratner-directed doc, discount online site Temu is putting up a cool 19 bucks for a Don Jr movie.
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