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.
Airborne Distraction Action
Something tells me that anyone talking about the upcoming four years should bone up on their pickpocket slang. As any rapscallion knows, pickpockets use misdirection to lure the attention of a mark (see also: “rube,” “chump,” “Trump voter”) so they don’t feel it when the thief (aka: “cannon,” “dipper,” and the elegantly bananas “slip-gibbet”) robs them blind.
Which brings us to the recent spate of drone sightings over New Jersey’s finest tanning salons, a story so metaphorically apt that the mainstream media is falling all over itself to literally aid in its own victimhood. As Seth Meyers noted in his “A Closer Look” segment Wednesday, “Seriously, our government is devolving into a personal autocracy controlled by a corrupt felon and a handful of billionaires who are drawing up plans to enrich themselves and punish their enemies and all anyone wants to do is talk about a toy you can get at Best Buy for like 40 bucks.”
Now nobody is saying that the incoming oligarchy has commissioned a fleet of flying plastic crap to capture the nation’s attention away from Trump and company’s plot to loot your Social Security, retirement fund, and healthcare. Honestly, they didn’t need to, as the press and the goldfish-brained internet discourse is all too happy to chase whatever shiny thing the sky heaves into view rather than engage with the criminal conspiracy developing all around them. It’s a real whiz mob play, is what I’m saying. (Remember to always keep your democracy in your front pocket.)
[On CNN doing its own rooftop drone-based exposé] “Wait, you’re at a college program dedicated entirely to drones called the drone port in a state where people are seeing the drones, you just explained that CNN itself uses drones, you’re currently surrounded by drones, and you can’t figure out where the drones are coming from? This is like watching someone knocking over a beehive and then start screaming, ‘Help! Something is stinging me and I don’t know what!'”
seth meyers
“We’ll have more on this story as it continues to be nothing.”
stephen colbert
[After CNN’s drone expert notes that actual spy drones would, you know, turn their lights off] “And you can trust him because his PhD is in statin’ the f**kin’ obvious.”
seth meyers
“Poor guy, he’s gotta sit there and walk through the pros and cons of shooting something out of the sky like it’s not the most obvious thing in the world. If I were him I’d be chugging a bottle of whiskey during this whole interview. ‘[Pouring whiskey] Well on one hand you could just ignore these incredibly common and widely available aircraft that so far have caused no harm and pose no threat to humans. [Chugging] On the other hand you could burn down the forest and your own house, kill someone and go to jail, so you know, it’s 50-50. Cheers, motherf**ker.'”
seth meyers
[After Donald Trump fanned the drone-flames with some coy “I know but I’m not telling” conspiracy bait] “What? You just said the government knows what’s going on and they should tell everyone. Now you don’t want to tell us what you know? ‘I don’t wanna comment on that. Let’s just say a very high-level confidential source told me that China has been developing advanced military technology that would allow them to cloak their spy drones—and I know this sounds crazy—by turning the light off.'”
seth meyers
[On GOP loon and anti-trans trauma-faker Nancy Mace jumping on the drones with both feet] “Oh my God, in one clip, she managed to sound like a whole rack of supermarket tabloids. ‘Is it aliens? Is it Russian and China? Are Brad and Jen getting back together?'”
seth meyers
“You think Russia and China lost a nuclear warhead and it’s in New Jersey? Did they lose it in a poker game in Atlantic City? Is that why Putin’s been walking up and down the beach with one of those metal detectors?”
seth meyers
UF-Ohhhh!!!
Of course, the real victims in all of this drone-happy sucker-bait are the fine people of New Jersey. Apart from being one of the states united in preparing for the coming kleptocratic fascist mugging, New Jerseyans have to contend with being the butt of literally everyone’s jokes.
Late-night hosts are asking why anyone would spy on New Jersey. News anchors are joking about it. Hell, even camera-hungry astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson chuckled while answering a CNN reporter’s query about the hub of all this alien conspiracy nonsense concerning drone activity, prefacing his implicit New Jersey slam with an inadequate, “No offense to New Jersey. I’m just saying, there’s the whole Earth they could have visited.”
As Seth Meyers put it, “I’m gonna guess based on every person I’ve ever met from New Jersey, offense taken.” He also suggested that New Jersey citizens might make some sort of pun about Uranus, but that’s another New Jersey slam, so let’s move on.
[On one anchor describing the phenomenon happening in “New Jersey and beyond”] “‘New Jersey and beyond’ sounds like the slogan of a deadbeat Buzz Lightyear.”
seth meyers
“Yes! Obviously the drones could be aliens, who are all famously obsessed with New Jersey. We know this—we all saw the scene from Close Encounters.” [Purely visual joke where the humans’ musical communication with the alien mothership is returned with “Living On a Prayer.”]
stephen colbert
“It’s just as the prophecy foretold, when the apocalypse comes it will start in New Jersey. ‘And I looked and I beheld a Pale Horse, and the name that sat on him was Tony, that lazy f**k, he was on the garden state parkway near exit 114 and he said, whoa, what’s wit’ all the friggin drones!!!'”
seth meyers
“All this clip proves is that drones are incredibly common and are used in virtually every aspect of modern life. Would it shock you if some dipsh*t started flying them at night to freak people out? Especially in New Jersey, a state whose motto is, ‘I’m Just Bustin’ Balls!'”
seth meyers
Whoops, Got Your Democracy!
So what exactly are Donald Trump and his henchpeople actually stealing while we rubes jump at anything that moves like your dog spotting a squirrel at the bird feeder? Probably nothing too important.
You know, just major corporations falling all over themselves to funnel unregulated cash into Trump’s inauguration, billionaire CEO’s (many of whom own those news outlets prioritizing drone-mania over the GOP’s Project 2025 agenda) bending the knee at Trump’s tacky golf resort, and the press itself simperingly allowing itself to be bullied into submission so Trump doesn’t get too mad. Oh and all your money’s gone.
Yes, late-night hosts keep on taking to task their colleagues in the network news mines for dereliction of duty, a function that one imagines will only become more important—and more awkward around the water cooler.
[On Trump suing a newspaper for publishing a poll suggesting he might lose Iowa] “You won! So now it’s election interference just to get a prediction wrong? Well in that case, Punxsutawney Phil, you better lawyer up, buttercup, if you ever want to see your shadow again.”
stephen colbert
[On the lawsuit claiming the paper publishing the poll involved “leaking” and election interference] “It’s true! The Des Moines Register leaked its poll where you’d least expect it, in the Des Moines Register. Same way I leak my opinion every night at 11:30/10:30 Central, following your local news, sports, and weather leaks.”
stephen colbert
[On ABC settling a $15 million lawsuit that the network called Donald Trump a rapist—just because he’d been found legally liable for sexual assault] “And if the president thinks he can bully the media into never saying anything bad about him, well… [Takes off glasses for emphasis] So what else is goin’ on?”
stephen colbert
“Today, president-elect Trump hosted Jeff Bezos for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, right after Bezos was dropped off, someone stole him front the front porch.”
jimmy fallon
“Anyone have any money in the stock market? Not any more.”
stephen colbert
“Today the Dow plunged over 1,100 points. And that is a lot of… Dow units? Dow-lings? Moist Dow-lettes.”
stephen colbert
“Uber just donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Not to be outdone, Lyft just changed their pick mustaches to this.” [Photo of Lyft car with Trump wig.]
jimmy fallon
And Person Who…
Personal appearance jokes are cheap, lazy… and often very funny.
“Take South Carolina Republican and adult woman who gets her makeup done at the American Girl store, Nancy Mace.”
stephen colbert
Space Is the Place (Where They Forget Your Face)
So those astronauts whose week-long mission to the International Space Station has now stretched on to half a year and counting will have to wait a little longer to return home. Yes, brave space travelers Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will have to wait until at least the end of March for a rescue, owing to mechanical problems and the fact that few of their peers are all that hopped up to take on a gig that might stretch nearly a year beyond their specified work contract.
“Speaking of the sky, space. The sky’s dad.”
stephen colbert
“I’m guessing the games of I Spy are getting a little predictable. ‘I spy with my little eye…’ ‘Hatch. You spy a hatch. It’s always a hatch.'”
stephen colbert
[On NASA ensuring the public that the astronauts have enough holiday party supplies, don’t worry] “And what a holly jolly Christmas that’ll be. [Crooning] ‘I’m dreaming of a new poop-tube…'”
stephen colbert
Sun’s Out, Porn’s Out
One unintended consequence of turning your government over to fundamentalist authoritarians is about to smack Floridians right in the browser history in just a few short weeks. That’s because Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature has passed a law requiring adults who frequent sites like PornHub to upload their sensitive personal information—including their government issued ID—in order to gain access.
Now, for a user base who are the reason why incognito mode was invented, naturally this development isn’t going to work out, with PornHub and other adult companies choosing to (and pardon for this) pull out of the state entirely, citing privacy concerns. Man, PornHub, if you can’t trust a governing party inordinately obsessed with consenting adults’ sexual habits and identities as part of a wide-ranging assault on people’s private lives and online histories, who are you gonna trust?
“And I’m sure this comes as terrible news to all those Floridians whose New Year’s resolution is to watch more porn.”
stephen colbert
[On the current PornHub pop-up warning about the coming blackout] “Meaning, in just two weeks, you will no longer get a pop-up.”
stephen colbert
“PornHub knows this is a slippery slope. They’re not set up to have your secure information. They have no interest in collecting your mom’s maiden name. They want your stepmom’s maiden name.”
stephen colbert
Potpourri
[On a 106-year-old woman crediting her longevity to her love of Fireball whiskey] “Then she blew out her candles and her house exploded.”
jimmy fallon
[On Party City filing for its second bankruptcy] “That’s so sad. You know what, I should throw them a goodbye party. I’ll go to… no!! I didn’t see that coming.”
stephen colbert
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