Jimmy Kimmel
Fresh off his Oscars hosting gig, Jimmy Kimmel recapped highlights of the evening on his Monday night show, starting with a headline-making bit that found John Cena naked on stage to present the award for best costume design. “Of all the times I’ve hosted the Oscars or the Emmys or anything, no comedy bit has ever received more scrutiny than this,” Kimmel said. “There were meetings and side meetings, there were emails and text messages and phone calls, there were people sweating, somebody was crying.
“Then, once they realized we weren’t going to take no for an answer, there were intense discussions about the size of the envelope, and whether we needed to velcro it to John’s body,” he continued. “We had to fill his crack and have socks and various testicalia was discussed.
“Congratulations, John Cena, the commotion you caused,” he added. “Very rarely does an idea literally push the envelope, and this one did.”
Kimmel also touched on his decision to read Donald Trump’s Truth Social post criticizing his hosting on stage at the end of the show. “He wrote this because he was upset I didn’t mention him on the show, and no one mentioned him on the show,” he explained. “He wasn’t getting any attention and he couldn’t stand it, and then the Adderall McFlurry kicked in and he went right on.”
Kimmel said reading it onstage was not planned, but he felt compelled to share. “To quote Al Pacino: ‘just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in, and I had to read it.’
“Funny, we had John Cena on stage naked and somehow Trump managed to be the biggest dick of the night,” he added.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers mocked Republicans who claim Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech was because he was on drugs, with Sean Hannity going as far as calling the president “Jacked Up Joe”. “Republicans keep coming up with better messaging for Biden than Biden does,” Meyers joked.
Meyers argued that the new moniker is actually a win for the Biden campaign. “That makes him sound like a professional wrestler,” he said. “Biden should start entering speeches with a hottie on each arm. ‘I’m not kiddin’ around here brother, you’re gonna regret the day you met Jacked Up Joe, oh yeah! Oh yeah, folks!’”
The nickname is especially rich, Meyers noted, considering a new inspector general report about the Trump White House’s actual drug problem, over-issuing speed and Xanax to employees. “Now we can’t legally say that Trump is on drugs, but he does look like every side-effect from a drug commercial,” said Meyers. “Sweats like crazy, gets cotton mouth, has trouble seeing the teleprompter and glitches like his brain is an exploding Rube Goldberg machine.
“I’m starting to think Trump’s always raging against the cartels because he considers them the competition – ‘We have to stop fentanyl from crossing the borders because it’s bringing down the price of our White House fentanyl,’” he joked.
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert noted that the two remaining presidential candidates had “starkly different messages. Biden’s message is ‘vote for me because Trump is terrible.’ Trump’s message is ‘vote for me, because I am terrible.’”
In a speech over the weekend, Trump mocked Biden for his lifelong stutter. “Wow, you really want to go there?” said Colbert. “First of all, Biden didn’t stutter like that. Second, you want to make this a word-talkin’ contest, you’re one of the weirdest speakers in human history.”
Colbert also touched on the Kate Middleton royal Photoshop scandal that is consuming swaths of social media after multiple news agencies pulled a Kensington Palace-issued photo for “manipulation”.
Among the issues with the photo: Kate’s hair and zipper were misaligned, Princess Charlotte’s hair had an artificial pattern and a portion of her sleeve was missing. “These are all Photoshop errors and not, as many had assumed, the result of centuries of in-breeding,” Colbert joked.
The Daily Show
And on the Daily Show, the guest host Jon Stewart mocked the Alabama senator Katie Britt’s unhinged rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.
Britt’s speech has been roundly mocked for being “objectively terrible”, but Stewart wanted to call attention to one underappreciated bit: when Britt told all the parents and grandparents listening to “get into the arena”, encouraging them to “never forget: we are steeped in the blood of patriots who overthrew the most powerful empire in the world”.
“Two things,” said Stewart. “One: who smiles when they say the line ‘steeped in the blood of patriots’? And number two: this is just one more entry in the Republican mythology that they are the inheritors of the American revolutionary tradition. That they somehow are more American-y than non-Republican Americans.”
Stewart blasted Republicans like Britt’s holier-than-thou patriotism. “If you want to love Trump, love him. Go to the rallies, buy the sneakers. You want to give him absolute power? You want him to be the leader über alles? You want him to have the right of kings? You do you. But stop framing it as patriotism,” he said.
“Because the one thing you cannot say is that Donald Trump is following the tradition of the founders,” he continued. “He is advocating for complete and total presidential immunity … that is monarchy shit. And it’s your right to support it. But just do me a favor for historical accuracy: next time you want to dress up at the rallies, wear the right fucking colored coats,” he added over a picture of British redcoats.
