Late-night hosts reacted to Republicans claiming USA hockey Olympic victories as their own and the US supreme court declaring Donald Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional.
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart returned to his Monday-night Daily Show perch just a day after the US Olympic men’s hockey team beat Canada in overtime to win the country’s first gold medal since 1980. “This country is in such emotional turmoil right now,” he said. “A feeling that we are one nation divided, under siege. That perhaps we have crossed a Rubicon of this great American experiment, and that we, slowly and inexorably, are sliding into the abyss of fallen and broken democracies. But then!”
Stewart played a clip of the dramatic winning goal by 24-year-old Jack Hughes. “I know the powerful elites remain unaccountable, but he put that thing behind that other guy!” he exclaimed.
“This country was sinking into a cesspool we can’t recover from, but the vulcanized rubber disk went past the lord of the net. It was so unifying. There is nothing that can take away from the joyous moment as all Americans celebrate this incredible – wait, what the fuck?”
He then played a clip from the locker room celebration immediately after the game, in which Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, was seen drinking beer with a gold medal around his neck. “Is that FBI Director Kash Patel?” Stewart fumed. “And why are they putting a medal around the neck of FBI Director Kash Patel? Is Kash Patel a Make-a-Wish man? Kid? Is that what this is? And I’m not trying to diminish his condition. Listen, there is currently no cure for crazy eyes.”
Later in his monologue, Stewart touched on Trump’s controversial tariffs, which the supreme court, even stacked with conservative justices, declared unconstitutional in a 6-3 opinion. “Somebody finally had the balls to say they were illegal,” said Stewart. “A court composed mostly of his own party’s appointees has struck down the constitutionality of Trump’s go-it-alone tariff regime. That’s bound to cause him some introspection.”
Not quite. In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the supreme court a “disgrace to our nation” and suggested the justices were an “embarrassment” to their families.
As Stewart joked: “When a guy who had sex with a porn star right after his wife had given birth tells you you’re an embarrassment to your family, I think you have to take that seriously.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host returned after an eventful week off. “We were gone one week, and he’s now at war with the supreme court,” he recapped. “He’s threatening a real war with Iran. He’s firing off tariffs, 10%, 15%, he’s got the FCC threatening talkshows. He’s threatening Netflix. He’s all of a sudden threatening to release the UFO files. And it really makes you stop and wonder: what the hell could be in those 3m Trump-Epstein files they’re still hiding?
“He’s working so hard to distract us,” he added. “The only thing he hasn’t done is set his nipples on fire.”
Kimmel also relished the supreme court’s dismissal of Trump’s tariffs. “This was Donald Trump’s most humiliating legal defeat, even more than the one with the porn star, where he farted through the whole trial,” he quipped.
The decision left Trump angry, Kimmel said: “He lashed out at his own handpicked justices. He called them fools and lapdogs. He said they were an embarrassment to their families. And as father to Eric and Don Jr, that is man who knows an embarrassment to his whole family.
“And now, the whole thing is a mess because these companies want refunds for the tariffs they paid, but no one knows how to go about getting one,” he added. “And of course, Donald Trump doesn’t give refunds. If he gives a refund, it’s like when Rumpelstiltskin says his own name. He shrivels up and he disappears.”
Stephen Colbert
“Justices, you’ve done something truly historic,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “You’ve made people go ‘woohoo!’ about tariffs.”
The 6-3 supreme court ruling went “along douchebag lines”, he explained, with the dissent from Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh – “or as they’re known by their DJ names, Flagman, Mr RV and the Boof Crew”.
The chief justice, John Roberts, “smacked Trump down” in the majority opinion: “The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration and scope … He must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it.”
“Do you hear that, Mr President? Your tariffs are so illegal, the supreme court just ordered you to exercise,” Colbert quipped.
“Trump was not thrilled with the court’s decision”, and went off in a post on Truth Social that was “longer than the Unabomber’s user agreement”.
In the screed, Trump went after the majority justices personally, calling them “fools” and “lapdogs” who were “swayed by foreign interests”.
“And Trump has been very clear that he will not be swayed by foreign interests,” Colbert added sarcastically. “Only by foreign golden planes, foreign golden crown and foreign Fifa peace prize”.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Trump’s claim that he read the entire supreme court decision overruling his tariffs. Or, as Trump put it: “I read all the paragraphs … I read everything there is to read, and I said, ‘Can’t lose this case.’”
“Man, that’s how you know someone’s a book lover – when they read all the paragraphs,” Meyers deadpanned. “It sounds like an alien pretending to be a high school sophomore.”
Speaking of aliens, Trump teased the release of government documents “related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena and unidentified flying objects”.
And “if you’re wondering why he would release that now, I will point you to a clip from this show a few months ago”, said Meyers before a Late Night clip from July, in which he said: “I honestly think we’re one more Epstein story away from Trump announcing that UFOs are real.”
“Look, look, look, I do not have the ability to predict the future,” said Meyers in the present. “But just in case I have magic powers, let me just say – because you know more is coming – that we’re one Epstein story away from Trump saying, ‘I don’t think I’m good at this job. I don’t want to do it any more. I’m tired all the time. Nobody likes me. And on top of that, my hand is so fucked up, you guys.’”
And with that said: “Now we just sit back and wait.”
