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.
It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity… Also the Heat
With a so-called ‘heat dome’ encasing much of the country like a garage with the door shut and the car running, it seemed like most late-night hosts couldn’t truly get revved-up to talk about much else on Wednesday. In fact, Stephen Colbert dug up a recent study claiming that excessive heat like the current heat wave can rob people of their ability to form coherent words. “Wow,” Colbert goggled vacantly at the news,”… cucumber.” Someone should really check on him.
“Right now the number one tourist attraction in New York City is the thing that sprays down the produce at Whole Foods.”
jimmy fallon
“[According to the same study] “Hot weather can result on lower scores on math tests as well as higher rates of aggression, ranging from mean-spirited behavior to violent crime. Well that explains Florida.”
Stephen Colbert
“The heat is being called intense, extreme, severe, and fierce. You know it’s bad when the weather is being described in sauce options from Buffalo Wild Wings.”
jimmy fallon
[On reports that Caribou, Maine hit a record 103 degrees on Wednesday] “That explains Stephen King’s new book, Misery 2: The Backs of My Knees Are So Sweaty.”
stephen colbert
“I spent all day sweating like a Fox News anchor trying to explain Juneteenth.”
jimmy fallon
Happy Juneteenth! (Not Valid at Fox News)
As Fallon helped us segue just then, Wednesday was Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating the day when, in 1865, the last enslaved people in America learned about the Emancipation Proclamation. “Wait a minute,” one might ask,” the Emancipation Proclamation was published in 1863, so how were there any slaves just getting the news that Black people were no longer considered property two whole years later?”
And you’d be well within your rights to ask, since Republicans and every white relative you have blocked on social media work harder than anything else in their lives to prevent schools from teaching America’s shameful past regarding African American history. Turns out that white people are gonna white people, and Texas slaveholders sort of held back the knowledge that slavery was over from enslaved Black people until finally, the last outpost of stubborn racist evil in Galveston, Texas was forced by the federal government to knock that sh*t off on June 19, 1865. And yet, President Joe Biden’s decision to make Juneteenth an official federal holiday in 2021 still has certain white people’s states’ rights-fetishizing panties in a bunch, with Jimmy Kimmel stating, “Today is Juneteenth, or as it’s called on Fox News, it’s Wednesday.”
[On the news finally reaching Galveston] “That must have been one hell of a message. ‘Hey guys, President Lincoln says you’re all free!’ ‘Amazing, let’s go thank him.’ ‘Oh shoot— I mean, oh darn.'”
stephen colbert
A Grab Bag of Trump
As noted above, late-nighters were sort of all over the place concerning current events on Wednesday, which, again, blame the heat. Jimmy Kimmel certainly did when surveying Donald Trump’s most recent outdoor rally in Wisconsin, where the Republican candidate, convicted felon, and adjudicated rapist continued his streak of campaign appearances marked by melt-brained gibberish.
Trump continued to rail against sharks, mangled the name of journalist George Stephanopoulos as, variously, “George Stopalopadis” and “Stopaldine,” and concluded one unfocused attack on his presidential rival with a phrase sounding something like, “Joe Biden’s forming, granting… Masked Singer.” Sadly, Trump’s meltdowns can’t all be tied to a need for fluids, as Seth Meyers did a deep dive into Trump’s recent policy proposals, which remain as unhinged as ever. Referring to Trump’s pitch to replace income tax with an 85 percent tariff on all imported goods, Meyers deadpanned, “I’v e gotta be honest, not only am I starting to think Donald Trump is not a populist, I’m starting to think he may not understand business. I mean, he knocked it out of the park with Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump water, Trump airlines, and Trump cologne, but at some point the winning streaks gotta end.”
[On Trump’s word salad attempt at mockery] “He would make a great high school bully. ‘Hey Simon, I see you got glasses. That’s why I’ll call you flon-blyes. I mean four guys. I mean shut up, my parents are getting bliborsed.'”
stephen colbert
[On the author of a recently published book about The Apprentice sharing alarming tales of Trump’s mental lapses] “Trump of course denied that vehemently. His spokesperson called the writer ‘a nobody’ and ‘a loser.’ Which, I guess, is why he took time to do interviews with him.”
jimmy kimmel
[On Trump accusing President Biden of doing cocaine in preparation for the presidential debate] “Joe Biden is not on the Peruvian marching powder. But if he did want to dance with the white lady he could raise a lot of campaign cash selling his own brand of Joe-Caine.”
stephen colbert
[On author Ramin Setoodeh reporting that Trump boasted that comedian Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016, despite dying in 2014) “So he’s right, dead people are voting.”
jimmy kimmel
[On Trump’s attempts to portray his policies that solely benefit wealthy GOP donors as somehow benefiting the working class] “That’s how bad they are at rebranding. The only blue collar jobs they can think of are the ones that come in Lego sets. ‘The Republican Party is the party of construction workers, taxi drivers, firefighters, police officers, Jedi, ninjas, and Harry Potters!'”
seth meyers
[On Trump going on at length to a Wisconsin crowd about his preference for their lakes over shark-infested coastal ocean waters] “Sure, that’s what everyone associates with Wisconsin, no sharks.”
stephen colbert
[On Trump telling that same author that he had to excuse himself to take care of a situation with “the Afghanistan” despite not being President at the time] “That’s gotta be his code word for the toilet, right?”
jimmy kimmel
Vermont Is for Soakers
Stephen Colbert had some fun with a particularly odd political story out of the unassuming state of Vermont, where Republican Congresswoman Mary Morrissey was caught on camera after a months-long assault on a Democratic colleague’s tote bag. Rep. Mary Morrissey was captured on the hidden camera installed by Democratic Congressman Jim Carroll after his state house tote bag kept turning up soaking wet. Speculation exists that the two old friends had become estranged mainly over the issue of abortion, with forced-birth supporter Morrissey taking out her anger on her fellow official’s pro-choice stance with surreptitiously spiteful dousings.
“A tote bag caper! This is the most Vermont mystery since Nancy Drew and the Case of the Missing Bootleg Recording of Phish Live at Glens Falls Civic Center.”
stephen colbert
“It’s a political scandal that some are calling [dramatic pause]… Watergate.”
stephen colbert
“What a bizarrely slow and innocuous prank. I kind of wish the show Punk’d had been more like this. ‘Hey Seth Green, over the last five moths, I’ve gradually replaced your whole milk in your latte with 2 percent! You just got Confus’d!'”
stephen colbert
[On the apparent cause of Morrissey’s juvenile soaking spree] “Yes, Carroll supports Roe v. Wade and Morrissey believes, ‘Tote bag thirsty, glug, glug, glug.'”
stephen colbert
[On the caught wet-handed Republican claiming her actions do not represent “her character”] “Okay, counterpoint. Once you do something repeatedly for months, it is your character.”
stephen colbert
“This’d be like Sir Mix-a-Lot saying, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, I’m really more of a breast man.'”
stephen colbert
Potpourri
[On a Fox News analyst praising Democrat-led caps on drug prices] “Somewhere in Australia, Rupert Murdoch is angrily snapping a didgeridoo in half.”
seth meyers
“Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un just signed an agreement that pledges mutual aid if either country faces aggression. Kim Jong Un and Putin made it official and then they got a text from Trump that said ‘Thruple?'”
jimmy fallon
“The California State Fair is going to allow cannabis—marijuana—to be sold and consumed on the state fair grounds. Which means we’re gonna need more funnel cake.”
jimmy kimmel
“Chipotle is selling a new ‘Chipotle Boy Bowl,’ aimed at finance bros. A bowl for finance bros—it’s a normal bowl, but instead of building it yourself, your dad just hands it to you.”
jimmy fallon
“A woman in Maryland bought a vase at a thrift store for four dollars that turned out to be a 2,000-year-old Mayan artifact. Experts were like, ‘You’re either rich or cursed.'”
jimmy fallon
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