Weds Night Monologues: LateNighters’ Super Tuesday Hangover

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.

Haley and Farewell

Nikki Haley dropped out of the presidential race after Super Tuesday, despite having scored her first primary victory in Vermont, with its nine delegates. After conceding the race to now-presumptive nominee Donald Trump, Haley is now on the clock when it comes to whether or not she will endorse Trump, whom she has called “toxic and lacking “moral clarity.”

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“America will never forget you… oooh, I wan’t to say Narky Stanley? Nibbly Snacky? Sticky Hale-Bopp?”

stephen colbert

“But I swear to God, if you turn around end endorse Trump I will… totally expect it.”

ronny Chieng

[After Haley waffled on whether she’d honor a Republican pledge to support the party’s presidential nominee, no matter who] “Why would anyone in the Republican Party give a damn about the GOP pledge when the guy who runs the GOP has never been bound by any pledge in his life. He hasn’t been bound by a pledge to remain faithful in his marriages, a pledge to honor the Constitution, a pledge to pay his taxes, or a pledge not to tell people to cure Covid by drinking Pledge.” 

seth meyers

“Yeah, Vermont! Which means, by law, she gets her own Ben & Jerry’s flavor. So keep and eye out for Half-Baked Explanation of How Slavery Didn’t Cause the Civil War.”

Stephen Colbert

“But here’s the good news for Haley, she’s only 52. So that means she can run for president at least eight more times.”

Jimmy Fallon

“Don’t quit now, Nikki, you were only 80,000 delegates behind! If you drop out who will little girls without any principles, convictions or charisma look up to?”

Ronny Chieng

Biden-Trump II: Democracy or… Not

With the also-rans cleared, it’s now officially a Biden-Trump rematch of the 2020 presidential election, with various former candidates choosing up sides. Retiring GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell threw his support behind Trump, an act Stephen Colbert called “a final, cynical act of evil and cowardice,” with Colbert referencing Trump’s long history of insulting everything from McConnell’s age, intelligence, and even McConnell’s wife, whom the former president infamously attacked with anti-Asian slurs.

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“What is wrong with your brain, apart from that thing that is obviously wrong with your brain?”

Ronny Chieng

“That headline again, ‘Tortoise Endorses Hair.'”

stephen Colbert

“At least we think that McConnell endorsed Trump. Halfway through, he froze and switched over to an old Windows screensaver.”

Seth meyers

“[Trump] did especially well in the few states where he isn’t currently on trial.”

stephen colbert

“In North Carolina, even though Trump took the state, one in four Republican voters said they would be ‘dissatisfied’ if Trump got the nomination. Really? Just ‘dissatisfied?’ We’re talking about an existential threat to the republic, not clicking the frowny face at the airport bathroom. ‘How was the gulag? Huh, out of paper towels.'”

stephen colbert

“Now it’s pretty much certain we’re gonna have a rematch between Biden and Trump. At this point, the only thing that could stop them is a flight of stairs.”

jimmy fallon

[On would-be Democratic spoiler candidate Dean Phillips endorsing President Biden after losing his home state of Minnesota] “He then slammed his bedroom door, blasted My Chemical Romance, and said he wasn’t even hungry for dinner but could he have chicken fingers.”

stephen colbert

“Biden is now adding the entire Phillips coalition. It’s a big tent. Sleeps two.”

stephen colbert

Island Sweep

The other not-so-big story was Joe Biden’s surprise primary loss in American Samoa to a guy named Jason Palmer. With the Baltimore businessman scoring a dominant 51 of the protectorate’s 91 cast ballots, late-night hosts rushed to cover the upstart, with Stephen Colbert noting, “I recently just learned that a Jason Palmer is half Jason and half lemonade.”

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“Now you may be asking, ‘Who is Jason Palmer. The answer is ‘yes.'”

Stephen colbert

“This guy is going down there like, “Hey, I’m the most famous guy in America—you guys don’t have the internet, right?”

Ronny Chieng

“Meanwhile, Donald Trump thinks American Samoa is a Girl Scout cookie.”

Jimmy Fallon

“This guy makes Dean Phillips look like Ryan Binkley. And if you know who either of those people are then you’re too invested in politics. Go see Dune or something.”

stephen colbert

Well, When You Put It That Way

As one late-night host proved on Wednesday, sometimes a run-on sentence is really the only way to get your point across when it comes to Donald Trump.

“Well, here we are, you guys. Donald Trump is now the presumptive GOP nominee for president. Again. For the third time. Despite the fact that he is a twice-impeached, four-time criminal indictee and racist who’s been found liable for fraud and sexual abuse, banned for doing business in the state of New York for three years, owes over half a billion dollars in fines, took millions from foreign governments while he was president, tried to extort a foreign country to interfere in an election in 2020, and encouraged another to help him win in 2016… actively undermined the nation’s response to a once in a lifetime pandemic and let a deadly disease spiral out of control, is about to go on trial for breaking campaign finance laws for paying hush money to cover up an affair during the 2016 campaign… orchestrated a months-long coup attempt that culminated in a violent insurrection to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power and install him as an unelected dictator… stole classified documents and obstructed attempts to try and get them back, has never once won the popular vote and has been routinely rejected by a majority of Americans in election after election… spews deranged conspiracy theories about everything from climate change to immigration to vaccines, to windmills… glitches on three-syllable words, two-syllable words, and one-syllable words, cheats at golf, can’t spell his own name, his wife’s name, of the words ‘indicted,’ ‘education,’ ‘unprecedented,’ ‘stolen,’ ‘Denmark,’ ‘Kentucky,’ or ‘tap,’ and is, on top of everything else, the single weirdest and most off-putting human being on the face of the f***ing planet. And this is the same planet Ted Cruz lives on.”

seth meyers

Potpourri

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[After GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green angrily swore at a British reporter for asking her about her “Jewish space lasers control the weather” statement] “It’s a testament to British manners that even after being told to f-off by a raving lunatic, they still say, ‘Thank you very much.’”

Seth Meyers

“That New York Times poll is a mess. It found Trump winning the female vote by one percent when Biden carried women in 2020 by 11 points. Somehow I doubt Trump has won by back 12 percent of women with his inspiring message, ‘I’m a rapist!'”

stephen colbert

“Biden’s [State of the Union] speech will be carried by all of the major networks, like NBC, CBS, and ABC. Which means the big winners tomorrow will be Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.”

jimmy fallon

[On social media site Threads going down] “Oh that’s weird, it was working fine six months ago when I signed up for it and never looked at it again.”

seth meyers

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