Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s sleepy appearance at a 9/11 remembrance event and a new round of panic over a possible AI doomsday.
Jimmy Kimmel
The night after the Emmy awards, Jimmy Kimmel returned to the stage in Los Angeles with a recap of the president’s remembrance event last Friday for the 25th anniversary of 9/11. “And while Donald Trump doesn’t typically shine in situations like this, he is a New Yorker,” Kimmel said. “He was there when this happened and he was, I have to admit, surprisingly eloquent.”
Kimmel cut to a clip of Trump speaking at the Pentagon event: “We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11, 20-01, a very famous … date … unfortunately.”
“He’s at his best when he riffs, you know?” Kimmel quipped.
“At the event, Teddy Doze-evelt got in a pretty good nap,” he added. “He was sleeping so much on camera the White House had to put out a statement that said he wasn’t asleep. They said he was just ‘solemnly listening’. Which is the same kind of ‘solemnly listening’ Melania does when he tries to crawl into bed with her.”
“It’s so perfect,” he continued. “The guy who spent four years screaming, ‘Sleepy Joe, Sleepy Joe,’ constantly falling asleep on camera.” Kimmel then played a montage of Trump asleep at major events, including his first Board of Peace meeting, his own inauguration, his big fireworks parade, the third game of this year’s NBA finals, his Freedom 250 concert, his Memorial Day remembrance event, the pope’s funeral, Lindsay Graham’s funeral, and too many Oval Office press conferences and cabinet meetings to count.
“But I will say this: compared to Mitch McConnell, Trump has more energy than Kevin Hart,” Kimmel joked before a clip of the 84-year-old former Senate majority leader returning to work after a three-month hospitalization and absence, appearing dazed and unresponsive to reporters.
“He seems good, right?” Kimmel quipped. “For months, no one was sure if he was even alive. And we still don’t know!”
The Daily Show
And on The Daily Show, Josh Johnson also touched on McConnell’s return after a prolonged absence that sparked numerous conspiracy theories. The Kentucky senator did not respond to any questions while being wheeled from his apartment to a waiting car on Monday, but he did offer a silent thumbs-up.
“That’s not the thumbs-up of a man who’s doing well,” said Johnson. “That is the thumbs-up of a football player on a stretcher that you’re never going to see again.
“But maybe Mitch was just overwhelmed by the media circus outside his door,” he continued. “I’m sure after he gave the thumbs-up and got in his car, he seemed totally normal.”
Well, once in the car, McConnell appeared frozen in position, still giving a thumbs-up to reporters. “Wait, did he get stuck in thumbs-up?” Johnson laughed. “Quick, tell the Senate to vote on universal healthcare right now! He’s stuck like that, he has to vote yes. Republicans are going to have to flip him upside down to get a no vote.”
“I’m sorry, but everything here screams puppet,” he added. “Like there’s just a guy on the floor of the SUV with a fishing line being like, ‘Quick, y’all, I can’t open his mouth and move his thumb at the same time!’”
Later in the segment, Johnson responded to much fretting over a tweet by a former Anthropic researcher, who resigned after realizing that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
“End of the decade?!” Johnson marveled. “It’s fall 2026 – that’s just three pumpkin spice seasons away!”
The tweet kicked off a new round of speculation and consternation over the existential risks of AI development, including from the builders themselves. In an essay, Anthropic’s head, Dario Amodei, said it was possible that rogue AI agents “could be capable of taking over the entire internet” in six to 12 months; the leadership of OpenAI, Meta and xAI called for more regulation, as they believed the technology was becoming too powerful, too fast.
“I know a lot of people are worried that AI is going to kill us all before Shrek 5” – out in 2027 – “can give us closure, mainly because the tech CEOs gave us six months to live,” said Johnson. “But I’m not really sold on their narrative. I think it’s just as likely that these people in a speculative, overblown industry got into a room and were like, ‘So … is everybody out of money?’ And this whole thing about pumping the brakes is actually about taking the pressure off of them to deliver mass returns that we know still aren’t possible.
“It’s a lot like if a guy couldn’t get it up,” he added, “but instead of apologizing, he was like, ‘It’s actually, like, too big, you know? That’s the problem, really. I’m really saving your life right now because this thing is too dangerous! It’s not that I can’t perform; it’s that I want you to live.’”
