Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel opened Thursday’s show by acknowledging the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, at the age of 96. “To put it into perspective for Americans, this would be like if Kris Jenner died here,” he explained.
“The queen is known as England’s rock, and we don’t have a rock here. The closest thing we have to a rock in America is The Rock.
“When you think of all the people that the Queen has met with over the last 70 years, it’s really remarkable,” he said. “She’s met everyone from Lady Bird Johnson to Lady Gaga, from Bill Clinton to Will.i.am, she met JFK and JLo, she’s met the Beatles and the Spice Girls, she’s met the Iron Lady and the Iron Throne …
“She stood up to fascists,” he added over a photo of her in uniform during the second world war, “and she stood behind them” when Donald Trump visited Buckingham Palace. “And after all those years, this week she saw Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine and said ‘OK, I’ve had enough,’” Kimmel joked.
“We send positive thoughts to our friends in the UK,” he added, “and also to all the American aunts who are obsessed with the royal family for reasons I will never understand.”
Trevor Noah
Queen Elizabeth II has passed away and the reactions have been, let's say, varied. pic.twitter.com/w7u5jDtQV2
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 9, 2022
“It’s been interesting to see how varied the reactions to this news have been,” said Trevor Noah on the Daily Show of the Queen’s death. “The full spectrum of emotions, everything from ‘how will the kingdom carry on’ all the way to ‘you shouldn’t have colonized India – bye, bitch!’
“Whatever you think about the royal family or the monarchy, you’ve gotta admit, it’s insane how long Elizabeth sat on the throne,” he continued. “She came to power in 1952. You understand how long that is? That means she’s seen Adam West as Batman, Michael Keaton as Batman, Christian Bale as Batman, Ben Affleck as Batman, survived that and then saw Robert Pattinson as Batman.”
In other words, “she’s been in the game for a minute.”
Elizabeth’s son Charles is now king at 73 years old, “and until today, he still had the same title as his own grandchildren. That was weird,” said Noah. “The world wasn’t made for an old prince. I can tell you now, there is no one in a Disney movie who’s like ‘someday my prince will come, and he’ll wear orthopedic shoes and eat cottage cheese for meals.
“Charles is so old, he’s going to be the first royal to ascend the throne in one of those motorized stairlifts,” Noah joked.
Stephen Colbert
A title card on the Late Show said the Thursday program was filmed before the announcement of the Queen’s death, so Stephen Colbert focused again on Donald Trump’s legal troubles, including his struggle to find lawyers to represent him. “Of course, one possible reason lawyers don’t want to work for the ex-pres is that doing so puts them at the risk of being disbarred for breaking the law, and they don’t even get paid to break the law because the former president has a reputation for ignoring bills,” said Colbert.
Trump’s current legal team consists of a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a former host at far-right One America News, and a past general counsel for a parking garage company. “Please, Lord, I don’t ask for much, but please let this go to trial,” said Colbert.
Trump’s legal woes seem to be helping Democrats in the upcoming midterms, as the former president’s continued influence within the Republican party allows Democrats to frame the elections as a choice between normality and threatening extremism. “Now that sounds like an easy decision, but have you seen what Americans eat?” Colbert noted. “Given the choice, we always pick extreme – ‘Well, I was going to get a nice, healthy democracy, but if it’s only 75 cents more, give me the code-red fascist Baja Blast.’”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers unpacked new details about the top-secret documents seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago last month, some of which pertained to classified US operations so closely guarded that many top national security officials were kept in the dark about them. “In fairness, Trump was probably also kept in the dark about them,” Meyers noted. “Technically, I guess they had to show him classified documents when he was president, but they probably distracted him the same way you give your kid an iPad on the airplane to shut him up.
“Let’s just take a step back and let it soak in how insane this is,” he added. “The president just had a bunch of highly classified material just lying around the basement of his country club about extremely sensitive global affairs that affect the safety and security of the entire world and no, I’m not talking about Harry Styles spitting on Chris Pine.”
More seriously, Meyers concluded, “it’s probably not ideal that an ex-president with a bunch of corrupt foreign entanglements to monsters and dictators, not to mention various indicted henchmen, had a bunch of classified information about weapons that could eliminate all life on earth just lying around his country club, where spies or botox salesmen could just easily find them.”
