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.
A Real Policy Wank
After being utterly shown up and humiliated in the presidential debate as a babbling old troll who can’t answer a single substantive policy question without vomiting forth rancid word salad or screeching racist lies about Haitian immigrants, Donald Trump took to Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum for a rally yesterday, hosted by Arkansas Governor and aspiring Aunt Lydia, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Back in his safe space of nodding-along cultists who take his every rambling, disconnected non-answer as their one true gospel, Trump took questions from the audience about the economy and other genuine stuff a President is supposed to care about, with his replies reliably proving that the three-time Republican nominee for the highest office in the land is one knockoff, gold-colored sneaker short of a pair.
Responding to Trump’s repeated assertion that critics—and the rest of the intellectually sound world—just don’t get his subtle, nuanced oratorial style (which he persists in branding “the weave”), Seth Meyers found himself in something of a pickle. “But if I tried to list every demented thing Donald Trump has said right now,” explained the Late Night host, “I would still be here when the Today show starts. They’d have to put me in a little box in the corner of the screen.”
[After playing clips of Trump “weaving”] “In fairness to Trump, recent polls have found that the top three policy concerns among voters are, ‘How many times do you flush a toilet?,’ ‘What do Tic Tacs look like?,’ and ‘Was Pavarotti a nice guy?'”
seth meyers
“If there’s one issue that voters say is the most important to them, it’s the economy. it’s the top of the list, right above crime, health care, and HAITIAN IMMIGRANTS ARE EATING MY GRANDMA! OH WAIT, SHE’S JUST OUTSIDE GARDENING. MY BAD, MY BAD.”
ronny chieng
[On Trump bragging, “Only consequential presidents get shot at”] “This is true. Only the most consequential ever got shot at. Which is way Mt. Rushmore is Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, James Garfield, and Tupac.”
stephen colbert
[On Trump’s—let’s call it “response”—to a question about American manufacturing jobs] “What. Are you Talking. About. The number one threat to manufacturing jobs is nuclear weapons? Okay, in that case the number one threat to the New York Giants is nuclear weapons. ‘Oh sure, it’s easy to blame roster construction and play calling, but they drop a nuke on MetLife, the season is over!'”
seth meyers
[After Trump concludes a typically unintelligible answer about food prices with a rant about windmills, concluding with, “These windmills, oy, oy, oy”] “Right there he’s actually quoting my favorite line from Don Quixote: ‘These windmills! Oy oy oy. It’s gonna take a lot of chutzpah to defeat these schmucks. And the farkakte Spanish sun! I;m schvitzin’ my Sanchos off over here!'”
stephen colbert
[Same, this time about grocery prices] “Seriously, what are you talking about? We’d get a more coherent answer if we took a bunch of Scrabble letters, dumped them into a Bingo cage, picked ‘em out at random, translated from English to French and the back to German and then back to English, then recorded them on a VHS and played the tape backward. I’m honestly in awe of the fact that he can talk that long without making any sense whatsoever. I can’t even pretend to be him for that long. Here, I’ll try it: ‘Look, it’s very simple. Grocery prices are going up, due in large part to the massive disruptions caused by Covid and the predatory practices of large corporations’—Oh, sorry, that’s the real answer. Let me try again. ‘Grocery prices because of energy causing windmills to attack toilets flushing sharks down into the water next to the boats that have whales eating Tic Tacs causing’… Ahhhhhhh, f**k, I can’t do it!”
seth meyers
[On Trump’s ongoing and baffling citing of Hannibal Lecter in his speeches, which may have something to do with immigration? Maybe?] “‘They’re coming in from Silence of the Lambs, they’re coming in from all the 90’s movies. We’ve got sex workers coming in from Pretty Woman, we’ve got cross-dressing dads coming in from Mrs. Doubtfire, and we’ve got ghosts who don’t even know they’re dead from The Sixth Sense—spoiler, spoiler on that one. The point is, they’re not sending their Goodfellas.”
stephen colbert
[On footage of people walking out of Trump’s rally mid-speech] “That’s right, people don’t leave his rallies, a soaring message that was lost on the people who left that exact rally. Trump’s so insane, he’s getting fact-checked by his own supporters in real time. Next time he says Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man, they’re gonna cut to Hannibal Lecter in the crowd holding a sign that says ‘Actually I’m a Bad Guy!'”
seth meyers
[After Trump, answering a question about oil drilling, confidently and repeatedly confused the Alaskan ANWR wildlife refuge with Bagram Air Base which, while in a place also beginning with a big “A,” is in Afghanistan] “Okay, small thing. Bagram is a Taliban-controlled air base in Afghanistan. which, because he’s never wrong, means Alaska is now in Afghanistan.”
stephen colbert
[On Trump repeating the conspiracy theory that Kamala Harris was being fed debate answers “in the ear”] “For what it’s worth, if Harris did have people in her ear saying, ‘No Kamala, do this, say it this way, Kamala, okay be quiet, too many people watching,’ and still managed to kick your ass, I wouldn’t be telling us about it. If anything, watching that debate, I believe that you were wearing an earpiece that was just playing this on a loop. [Plays “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men at full volume]”
seth meyers
“In Trump’s mind, the only way that anyone could coherently answer questions about policy on the fly is if they’re getting fed the answers in real time. That says more about you than it does about her. ‘The clarity of her answers was very suspicious to me, because let me tell you, if they asked me those questions, I would have no f**king idea what to say. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I mean, you saw me at the debate, right? [Puts up picture of Trump] I mean, look at my eyes. I am just gone. There is nothing th—I look like a goldfish when you don’t clean the bowl for a week.'”
seth meyers
[After former GOP Speaker and current smirking propagandist Newt Gingrich, with a straight face, asserted that it’s not Trump but Vice President Kamala Harris who’s unable to “articulate a clear, coherent policy position”] “Now it would be easy for me to dunk on Newt here by listing off all the deranged and incoherent things Donald Trump has said over the years, but we don’t have enough time. Well actually, I did have the time, it was the last ten years. I’ve been doing that for ten years, and that is time I will never get back.”
seth meyers
[After moderator Sanders oxymoronically bragged that her kids keep her humble before moving on to smear stepmother of two Kamala Harris for not having biological children] “Wow. Oh yeah, it’s true. Everybody knows if you don’t have biological kids, you can’t be humble. It’s like that famous Ernest Hemingway story, “For sale: baby shoes. Didn’t need ‘em, ‘cause I’m a playaaaa!”
stephen colbert
[On the reported 16 thousand people who came to Trump’s Long Island rally] “Tonight the rest of the country found out that New York is a lot more Florida than you think.”
jimmy fallon
“Organizers say that there were 60 thousand online ticket requests. Turns out Rudy Giuliani just passed out with his head on the keyboard.”
jimmy fallon
Good Economic News, Possibly?
On another pressing economic topic Donald Trump could not in a hundred years explain, the Federal Reserve just announced that it’s cutting interest rates by a full half-point, as opposed to predictions that that august body would only cut them a measly quarter-point! As all economist can tell you—something, something. Look, late-night hosts aren’t big math guys either, okay?
“Oh my God, do you know what this means? Because i do not. I was a theater major—all of this was an accident.”
stephen colbert
“Oh my God, that’s huge! I assume. From the way he said it. I mean, I guess this is a big deal. Lower interest rates mean lower car payments, lower credit card payments, and of course cheaper home loans. So you know that house you couldn’t afford? Well, a half-point decrease means that now you can afford a bus ticket to drive past it.”
ronny chieng
[On a graph showing a dramatic spike in the Dow Jones Industrial average after the announcement] “That’s a financial phenomenon economists call BOIIING!!”
Getting Polled Big Time
A recent poll shows Kamala Harris leading Trump by a startling six points after the debate, a trend reflected in most other polls on both the state and national levels. (Even Fox News has Trump losing by two.) Trump’s taking the news well, certainly.
“Now, we all know the caveats here. These are just isolated polls, the polls are just snapshots and they could easily change. But try telling that to Donald Trump, a man with so much rage and so little impulse control, he scream-tweeted ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!’ in all caps like his sister was blasting Midnights through his bedroom wall.”
seth meyers
“A new poll found that Vice President Harris leads Trump by a massive 67 percent among LGBTQ voters. Trump said, ‘That’s ridiculous, a lot of my best friends a libitqua.'”
jimmy fallon
“It makes sense because Trump thinks marriage is a sacred vow between a man and a woman and another woman and then another woman.”
jimmy fallon
“Oh my God, Trump’s behind in Pennsylvania. Can you imagine what he’s going to blurt out at his next rally? ‘Gritty is a communist! Everybody knows it, look at his eyes. He’s a meth addict and a communist, many people are telling me, it’s so true.'”
seth meyers
[After 111 former Republican lawmakers and former Trump cabinet members endorsed Kamala Harris in a letter this week] “In some ways, Trump really is bringing the country together.”
jimmy kimmel
“But don’t worry, Don. You might not have every Republican, but you’re still endorsed by Rudy Giuliani, Sean Hannity, by Eric, Don Jr., Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, Gargamel, Chachi, The Babadook, Bill Cosby, and herpes.”
jimmy kimmel
[After House Speaker Mike Johnson, complaining about Harris’ economic plans, claimed, “It’s like Oprah’s running for President”] “Are you trying to win this for her? ‘Her ideas are like Oprah, her personality is that of Tom Hanks, and, no offense, her singing voice is barley as good as Adele’s!'”
seth meyers
“In a new interview, Dolly Parton said that Taylor Swift has been a great inspiration and added, “Lord knows, we need some uplifting people and things.” Man, if Trump responds by tweeting “I HATE DOLLY PARTON!,” he’ll finish third behind Jill Stein.”
seth meyers
The Scammiest Scam That Ever Scammed
Hey, Donald Trump is getting into crypto. What could possibly go wrong? [Googles the value of Truth Social, plus “Donald Trump casino bankruptcies.”] Oh, right. At least his associates this time around aren’t guys who sold Bigfoot insurance and toilets for extra-big wieners, so that’s something.
“This is great news. Donald Trump, the world’s most trustworthy businessman, is now in crypto, the world’s most trustworthy business.”
ronny chieng
[On all three Trump sons joining dad in the new venture] “Holy sh*it, they got four Trumps now! I mean, forget nepo babies, that’s a whole nepo nursery.”
ronny chieng
[On one of the major minds behind Trump’s crypto scheme, Chase Herro] “Wow, Trump’s partner is this is a weed dealer turned prisoner, turned colon cleanse marketer? I mean, clearly he understands the concept of diversifying your portfolio.”
ronny chieng
[On Herro’s helpful explanation of how great cryptocurrency really is] “So the guy running Trumps’ crypto company says crypto is basically, and I quote, ‘a can of sh*t, wrapped in piss’ that you can sell to idiots. I mean, that is crazy—I did not know you could wrap something in piss. That’s a liquid.”
ronny chieng
[On Trump’s other major investor, Zachary Folkman, who once ran a “pickup” company teaching “alpha males” “how to take home girls and bang them”] “I could not be more excited to trust my kid’s insulin money with these three guys: Donald Trump, a sh*t-in-a-can salesman, and Temu Russel Brand.”
ronny chieng
Escape From—and to—Reality
Look, enough politics, am I right? Late-night hosts had some thoughts on the somehow preferable version of “reality” represented by a pair of so-called reality TV shows, which, honestly, aren’t that much more farcical and meaningless than listening to a major political candidate lying about immigrants cooking up Fido and saying that global warming will at least mean lots of beachfront property for people in landlocked middle America. At least the TV version will have more sequins.
“Thank you for joining for our after the after the initial rose on a new old season of The Golden Bachelorette, or as it is also know, Love Is Blind, Partly Deaf, and Frequently Incontinent.”
jimmy kimmel
“Tonight was the premiere of the first ever season of The Golden Bachelorette. It features 24 senior men looking for love. The episode was two hours long. If it lasted four hours, everyone would have had to call their doctor.”
jimmy fallon
“That’s right, 24 senior men in one house. The line for the bathroom at 3 a.m. is gonna look like a halftime at an Eagles game.”
jimmy fallon
“Things are about to get steamier than an Icy Hot medicated patch.”
jimmy kimmel
[On the reality TV debut of convicted fraudster Anna Delvey] “She conned people and banks out of a quarter of a million dollars, and now that she’s out of prison she’s getting the most severe punishment we’re willing to give rich white ladies—Dancing With the Stars.”
Taylor Tomlinson
[On Delvey’s bedazzled, court-ordered ankle monitor] “You’ve heard of being an accessory to a crime, but have ever seen a crime accessory?”
taylor tomlinson
Potpourri
[On the 8-year-old girl who stole her parents car to go on a Target shopping spree] “I saw this video and was like, ‘Um, I don’t remember having a daughter but I guess she’s out there.'”
taylor tomlinson
“There’s a new theory that suggests Earth used to have a ring like Saturn. Asked why she no longer has a ring, Earth said, ‘Mars knows what he did.'”
jimmy fallon
“According to a new poll, young people are nervous about the 2024 election. Oh my God, am I young?”
stephen colbert
[On Trump bringing far-right conspiracy kook and 9/11 “truther” Laura Loomer to a 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero] “That’s like brining someone who thinks the moon landing was faked to Cape Canaveral.”
seth meyers
[On the report that the woman behind Trump and J.D. Vance’s racist pet-eating lie has since rescinded her claim after she found the cat she accused her immigrant neighbors of eating] “Okay, so this whole hideous episode started because someone lost something and blamed it on immigrants. ‘Where the hell are my glasses? Where are my glasses? Maria, the damn Dominicans must have taken them! Oh wait, oh wait, they’re on my head. Now the question is, how did the immigrants get on my head?'”
stephen colbert
[After the Secret Service suggested, for security reasons, Trump spend less time on his golf course] “Golfing, of course, is a major part of Trump’s daily life. If he can’t play golf, he’ll only be able to cheat on his wives, taxes, and elections.”
jimmy kimmel
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