On Thursday night, late-night hosts discussed an odd White House women’s history month event, the fallout of the war on Iran and why Melania Trump is starting to sound an awful lot like her husband.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel spent a chunk of his Thursday night monologue on a White House women’s history month fundraiser hosted by Donald Trump. As part of the event, Melania Trump gave an extended introduction to the president.
“You know how some couples as they get older start to sound alike?” asked Kimmel. “Well, while introducing her husband, Melania had an awful lot of nice things to say about herself.”
The first lady said: “As a visionary, I know that success is not born overnight but rather takes shape after a long and sometimes challenging process. Often alone at the top, I follow my passion, listen to my instinct, listen to my husband and always maintain a laser focus. In solitude, my creative mind dances.”
Kimmel laughed. “In solitude my creative mind dances? They could probably put any words in front of them and she’d just keep reading them.”
Melania added that her creative instincts were on full display in her new film, where she “shaped its creative direction”.
“What creative direction?” asked the host. “I watched that documentary. Nothing happens!” Later, Kaillie Humphries, an Olympic bobsled medallist, arrived onstage to tearfully present Trump with her Order of Ikkos medal.
“Yet another award he didn’t win,” noted Kimmel. “There’s no shame to this administration. There’s plenty of vanity but there’s no shame.”
The host then turned to Pete Hegseth’s battle against the free press in the wake of reports that the Pentagon has banned photographers from press briefings after they took unflattering images of the defense secretary.
“Who would have ever guessed that the guy who spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on a makeup studio would be a little bit self absorbed?”
“The truth is, Pete Hegseth is actually a pretty handsome guy on the outside,” concluded Kimmel. “On the inside, he looks like the old lady from Weapons.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers focused on Maga’s continued confusing messaging over the scale of the Iran attacks, with Republicans calling the conflict both a “short excursion” and “a longer war”.
“It’s pretty much complete and it’s also just beginning,” the host said. “High oil prices are a sacrifice we have to make, but also oil prices are coming down.”
He continued: “And also high oil prices are actually a good thing, and we already won but we might have to stay for four days or five weeks, or six months, jump in the strait of Hormuz for oil tankers because if it stays closed, oil prices that are coming down will go up and we’ll lose the war we’ve already won. Sure makes sense to me.”
With different Maga spokespeople giving conflicting messages, the war could either be over in a month or last well into September. After playing one CNN report, Meyers reacted: “You sound like my doctor after I ate a bottle of knockoff Viagra. ‘Could be a couple of hours, could be a year. But on the bright side, you won’t have to put down your groceries to open the door.’”
Meyers then turned his attention to Hegseth’s comments that “this is only just the beginning”.
“I will admit, it’s not great that the guy who runs the Pentagon sounds like the Joker after he gets arrested,” Meyers laughed, before adopting a gravelly voice: “This is only just the beginning, Batman.”
In an interview, Trump declined to give a definitive answer on the conflict’s length. When asked whether we were nearing the start or end of the war, the president replied: “I guess you could say both.”
“Both?” Meyers asked incredulously. “So suddenly you’re into Eastern philosophy?”
He then imitated the president: “‘You know, the end is also the beginning. We exist in the space between nothing and everything. We are with and without. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with Walton Goggins.”
Stephen Colbert
Over on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert reacted to a Trump rally in Kentucky where he mispronounced the state’s name. “How can you not know how to pronounce that name?” the host asked. “It’s on every one of your chicken buckets.”
Colbert also furrowed his brow at the administration’s incoherent messaging over the length of the Iran war. He played footage of Trump’s speech: “We’re not going to assume we have competent presidents, we’re gonna assume we have incompetent ones,” the president said.
The host responded: “Ooh, he’s so close to getting it. Just for the sake of argument, we have to consider that some day we might have the dumbest man alive as president.”
He went on to discuss Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who took power after US and Israeli strikes killed his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The new leader’s rule comes despite reports that he may have been in a coma.
Colbert deadpanned: “Incidentally, ‘Ayatollah in a Coma’: one of the very worst Dr Seuss books.”
The conflict in the Middle East has had severe knock-on effects on the supply chain, with reports that we are amid the largest ever oil disruption. “Tankers in the Persian Gluf and strait of Hormuz have burst into flames after coming under attack. Turns out you can’t just stir up historic levels of trouble and just be done with it.”
The host then impersonated Trump’s grandstanding: “Look, we opened a cursed mummy’s tomb, we took what we wanted and now we’re going to live happily ever after. They tell me there’s a sign up on the wall that says: ‘Eternal suffering to all who defile my resting place.’ I’m sorry, I only read English, not wingdings.
“People love font jokes,” the host quipped as the audience applauded.
