Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s lavish state dinner for the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and Jimmy Kimmel asked Zohran Mamdani about texting the president.
Jon Stewart
“Last week, a young man by the name of Donald Trump picked up a young man by the name of Xi Jinping, Chinese president, at the airport for a pivotal three-day visit to Washington,” said Jon Stewart at the opening of Monday’s Daily Show, after an unusually lavish welcome for the Chinese leader in DC.
“Now, as with any monumental meeting of superpowers, with profound repercussions for global safety and stability, it began with ‘House Tour’,” he added before clips of Trump showing off the White House’s gilded frames and red carpet to the visiting leader.
“Trump spent most of Xi’s White House visit just pointing at shit, while Xi did his best effort to pretend to be impressed. Although I’m sure they talked about issues of national importance,” said Stewart before another clip, this time of Trump telling the press of Xi: “We had a great meeting, and he has great interest in granite.”
“Does he? Does he love good granite?” Stewart wondered. “Is that his ‘I love good granite’ face? Because it looks like his ‘I’d rather be standing in front of a tank in a square’ face. Look it up.
“President Trump, I’m sure you’re proud of your new circular granite helicopter parking spot, but just so you know, this is Shenzhen, China,” he continued next to a photo of the futuristic city. “They’ve got a fully autonomous magnetic levitation train. Pretty sure he’s not blown away by carved rock in shape of circle.”
But it’s OK, Stewart continued with faux reassurance, because surely Trump understood “the seriousness of the competition between our two nations” and would not undermine US national security. “I mean, national security is the whole reason we’re paying $600m for this fucking ballroom, right? So you’ll keep that behind the curtain, yeah?” Except Trump did invite Xi and his wife “through that beautiful curtain”, making them the first people to set foot in the new “military complex” ballroom. “Maybe Trump’s just trying to sell Xi Jinping on renting the ballroom out for his next big function,” Stewart quipped.
But while Trump talked granite and ballrooms, he apparently did not bring up the fact that China is selling weapons to Iran. In fact, he even appeared to offer to sell weapons to China.
“What the fuck?! How does America even stay on the map sometimes?” Stewart fumed. “How do we not just slide into the sea?”
Seth Meyers
While Trump bragged about his multi-day welcome for Xi, “it didn’t seem like you got a lot of work done in those meetings,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night. “Mostly, I saw you babbling about the White House renovations, like the ballroom.
“First of all, if someone invites you to go ‘through that beautiful curtain in the back’, you need to get the fuck out of there,” said Meyers of the president’s invitation to Xi and his wife. “It’s like the first scene in a horror movie that takes place in an antique store.
“Also, isn’t this bullshit ballroom of yours supposed to include a bunch of top secret military facilities, and if it does, maybe don’t do the tour with the heads of foreign governments?” he added. “Must be so easy to be a spy these days – ‘this is Falcon. I’m on the premises, and I have eyes on the ballroom door. As planned, I will create a distraction, and then wait … hold up … sounds like he might just be giving us a tour.”
Meyers also mocked Trump’s enthusiasm for Xi’s alleged enthusiasm for granite. “Stop pretending that everyone else is interested in the same dumb shit you’re interested in!” he laughed. “First of all, outside of you, no one has a great interest in granite. If you meet someone who says they have a great interest in granite, odds are they’re also going to go through their beautiful curtain in the back.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, this week broadcasting from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, the host also roasted Trump’s lavish state dinner for Xi Jinping with the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and JD Vance, among others. “All the famous people who weren’t invited to Taylor Swift’s wedding were there,” Kimmel quipped.
“Trump says he and President Xi have never gotten along better, and they do seem to be quite close,” he added before a clip of Trump clasping hands with Xi while ascending the stairs to the White House.
Later in the show, Kimmel hosted “the president’s other man crush”, the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
After welcoming the mayor with a montage of Fox News clips fearmongering over his tenure, Kimmel asked Mamdani about his “unexpected” relationship with Trump, “which seems to be a very friendly relationship”.
He added: “Did you guys hit it off immediately or is it something that you really went into thinking, ‘OK, I need to have a relationship with the president of the United States, and I think the best way to do it is to charm him.’ How did you do that, and can you help me?”
“Sorry brother,” Mamdani replied. “The president and I have many disagreements. One thing we do agree on is this city, how much we love this city, so from that first meeting in November of last year, I was just thinking of how we can make this meeting not about us, but about New Yorkers. How can we spend that time talking about the things that can make life in the city a little bit easier.”
Kimmel then asked Mamdani about reports that he occasionally texts with the president, and requested they send “a selfie of us right now”, but the mayor shut him down: “Jimmy, I love you, but I love housing more.”
