Weds Night Monologues: President Musk and His Little Friend

After an Oval Office press conference from Elon Musk with Donald Trump sitting quietly to the side did nothing to quell those rumors about who’s actually running the government, late-night hosts had a field day evaluating what seemed to them like Musk’s performance review of a sullen employee. Add in the usual roster of gags concerning another day’s dysfunction in Trump world, and a little drop-by from some old friends, and it was a jam-packed night. Here’s our Wednesday night rundown.

Seth Meyers

Pulling out a stack of VHS tapes purporting to hold various montages of Trump hypocrisies by theme (“grocery prices” and ending “nation-building” apparently come right before one labeled “wedding vows”), Seth Meyers declared with mock enthusiasm, “Man, we are building quite the collection of montages where Trump contradicts himself. When he sees how much of a hypocrite he’s being, I think he’s gonna feel pretty silly!”

[On the whole Red White and Blueland bill put forth by Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA)] “Oh my God. These people get so upset when someone changes their pronoun but they treat world maps like f*cking Etch-A-Sketches.”

“The point is not that Trump is a liar and hypocrite. Everyone knows that on both sides of the aisle. It’s that right-wing MAGA populism is a scam. When you hear Republicans claim they’re against nation-building and foreign wars, just remember they’re the ones that want to own and occupy Gaza, Greenland, Panama, and Canada. Even George W. Bush would be like, ‘Red White and Blueland sounds dumb as sh*t. And I’m the guy who said nu-cular.'”

“So if you’re keeping track at home, we still don’t have a plan for lowering egg prices but we do have a plan for building hotels in Gaza.”

[On Trump’s ongoing plot to eject citizens of Gaza and turn the embattled region into a U.S.-run tourist resort] “When he first floated the plan, his chief of staff made a horrified face like she just saw the price of eggs.”

Meyers also battled Trump hypocrisy on another front, zeroing in on Tuesday’s bizarre Oval Office press conference in which an unelected Elon Musk fielded questions about his sweeping, legally challenged purge of government spending and agencies while Donald Trump sat fidgeting at his desk like “an intern who didn’t seem to be paying much attention.”

[Noting that Musk is cutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while simultaneously turning his social media platform into a financial payment system] “Oh cool, so to find out what our government is up to, we just have to wade through a sea of Nazis, ads for Cheech & Chong weed gummies, and bots with women in bikinis offering to send us one million units of something called sexcoin as long as we send our Social Security and bank routing numbers.”

[On Musk using a tombstone emoji to formally announce the end of CFPB protections on Twitter] “Okay, first of all, don’t announce policy via emoji. When Biden did student loan forgiveness, he didn’t tweet ‘school emoji, graduation emoji, money emoji, weed emoji.'”

[On Musk claiming that Trump’s “mandate” means voters empowered him, Elon Musk, to slash the government] “No, they voted for lower grocery prices. At least according to your sleepy receptionist over there.”

Jordan Klepper

Picking up on that bizarre White House press conference, Daily Show host Klepper played clip after clip of Musk stammering through an unaccustomed grilling from the assembled press, concluding that the billionaire tech mogul had bombed hard on the biggest of stages.

“Yes, Elon Musk is now in charge of all government heil-ings—hirings! Hirings. Sorry, I didn’t say that reich—right! I don’t know why I keep Hitler—misspeaking!”

“I mean, everything about this event was so bizarre. Trump was sitting quietly for half an hour, retreating to his happy place thinking about Arnold Palmer’s giant DOGE.”

[On Musk railing against “unelected bureaucrats” running the government] “Wow, I mean you can see why this guy’s a genius. You don’t want an unelected bureaucrat running the country. It makes a lot of sense, no questions here. I do have one question though—isn’t that you?”

“Am I going crazy, because it feels like I’m watching Drake sing ‘Not Like Us’ at karaoke.”

“Is having this one unaccountable bureaucrat in charge better than having those other unaccountable bureaucrats in charge? Because at least the others have to follow transparency laws. The only thing transparent about DOGE is Elon’s skin.”

“His financial disclosures are being kept secret, DOGE is exempt from open records laws, and when someone on Twitter merely identified some of the people who work for DOGE, Elon suspended their account and said ‘You have committed a crime.’ Which we tried to fact-check with career officials at the FBI, but they’re all working at a Panera now.”

[On Musk complaining that oversight of his actions represents a “daily proctology exam”] “Well, I did the exam, and what an a**hole.”

[On Musk’s many conflicts of interest] “SpaceX has government contracts, Tesla is under government oversight, X is under government investigation, and his hair plugs are being investigated by the Department of No One’s Buying This.”

[On Musk excusing his misinformed social media posts by claiming “nobody bats 1.000”] “You made up a $50 million conspiracy of sending condoms to Gaza.You’re not grounding out to third, you’re puking into the umpire’s mouth.”

Moving on to the guy Klepper portrayed as clearly the second banana in that meeting, the host returned to Trump’s ongoing obsession with Gaza.

[On Trump claiming “nobody’s going to question” his plan to forcibly remove two million Gazans from their homeland] “‘There’s no problem and nobody’s gonna question it?’ Trump is like a Jedi who doesn’t have the Force. ‘I’ll take Gaza, nobody’s gonna question it. [Futile hand gestures] Is this thing working?'”

[On Trump claiming, of Gaza, “We’re going to take it, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it”] “Okay so it’s going to be an ethnic cherishing.”

“I mean, how did that start like Mussolini speech and end as a Boyz II Men song?”

Jimmy Fallon

Focusing on another aspect of the Trump-Musk presser, Jimmy Fallon emerged for his Wednesday monologue with a child perched on his shoulders, mirroring Musk’s own four-year-old who pulled attention from the grown-ups in the room by acting like a little kid while a glum-looking Trump studiously avoided eye contact.

“Don Jr said, ‘Wait a minute, I was told there’s no such thing as take your son to work day.'”

“Trump was looking at him like, ‘Don’t you dare touch my dinosaur chicken nuggets.'”

[On Trump’s Tuesday phone call with Vladimir Putin] “Putin was like, ‘I told you I wouldn’t forget Valentine’s Day.'”

“The only awkward part of the call was when Putin said, ‘Is the president there?,’ and both Trump and Elon said, ‘Yes?'”

Fallon then moved on to some less political material—until he was interrupted by a trio of fellow former Weekend Update anchors in Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Seth Meyers, all of whom joined in for a spirited game of buzzer-mashing topical zingers.

“Joann Fabrics is closing 500 of its 800 stores. You could tell things are rough, ‘cause Joann just started an OnlyFabrics.”
jimmY fallon

[On Trump’s ban on paper straws in government facilities] “It’s all part of Trump’s plan to make American suck again.”
tina fey

“When Trump was told this might cause more turtles to die, he said, ‘I’m not concerned about Mitch McConnell.'”
amy poehler

[On Domino’s line of pizza-scented cologne] “Its tagline is, ‘Domino’s pepperoni perfume—It’s like being on an elevator with Joe Pesci.'”
tina fey

“Dominos guarantees that it will end your relationship in 30 minutes or less.”
jimmy fallon

[On skyrocketing chocolate prices] “So now the three most expensive things in the world are a Fabergé egg, a Cadbury egg, and an actual egg.”
Amy poehler

“Those prices will have you saying, ‘Sorry babe, I could only afford the pepperoni perfume.'”
seth meyers

[On a Florida couple arrested for having sex in front a Wendy’s] “The police said, ‘Hey, everyone knows you’re supposed to have sex behind the Wendy’s.'”
jimmy fallon

“Even worse, Wendy was into it.”
tina fey

Jimmy Kimmel

Before digging into the really dark stuff, Kimmel opened Wednesday’s monologue with the sunny fact that scientists are tracking an alarming two percent shot that a major asteroid collision could impact the Earth in the next decade.

“You know things are tough when you read that an asteroid might be headed at us and my first thought is, ‘Oh finally, some good news!'”

“You know the White House is trying to find a way to blame this on DEI, right? ‘They come from the blackness of space, these asteroids.'”

Moving on to someone he clearly sees as an even bigger threat to humanity, Kimmel took on Donald Trump’s recent, Elon-less press conference, in which he waxed on subjects ranging from bullies, to Gaza, to his ongoing preoccupation with how toilets work.

[On Trump deriding bullies as “weak”] “Does he have any self awareness at all? The character of Biff in Back to the Future is based on him, and that was 30 years before he became president.”

[On Trump promising that the 2 million Palestinians he wants to eject from their homes will be sent to “a beautiful location”] “This is not what you say to the people you’re evicting from the place where they live. This is what you say to your parents when you’re about to put them in a retirement home.”

[On experts saying that Trump’s cost-cutting plan to eliminate pennies would result in an increase in nickels, which would cost even more] “And if you understood that, you probably never bankrupted a casino.”

[On Trump vowing once more to eliminate environmentally friendly low-flow toilets] “I would suggest, Mr. President, that if you have to flush your toilet nine times, it may not be the water pressure. You might want to take a look at your diet. Maybe don’t eat the triple Whopper with cheese.”

[On Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow thanking Trump for showers that “pound down” on him, rather than giving him a “puny Biden drizzle”] “I am so turned on right now.”