Late-night hosts discussed the fallout from controversial comments made by a Republican candidate for governor and how difficult it has become to make valid criticisms of Israel.
Seth Meyers
The Late Night host Seth Meyers started by talking about the “dispiriting comments” made by Mark Robinson, who is the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina.
Comments were found by Robinson that expressed admiration for both nazism and slavery on a porn site called Nude Africa.
Meyers said that the Republicans “have a talent for attracting some of the most antisocial nut jobs on the face of the planet”.
After detailing the allegations, Meyers added: “Just as a side note, I have to ask: porn sites have comment sections? Who is that for? People who don’t have access to a bottle and an ocean?”
Robinson has denied the allegations, despite a wealth of ties that have been made from his profile to his person, including an email address, date of birth and his favourite episode of The Twilight Zone.
Robinson has blamed it on AI, claiming that a billionaire is trying to frame him. “That sounds like an episode straight out of The Twilight Zone,” Meyers quipped.
Donald Trump has complimented Robinson in the past, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids”, but Meyers said he was the opposite. “I can see him giving an ‘I have a nightmare’ speech,” he said.
The Trump campaign has now been “scrambling to distance … while not fully denouncing” Robinson, including in an awkward interview with JD Vance, who didn’t give a convincing response.
Meyers said this was a more believable use of AI and that Vance looked like what you’d get if you tried to “generate an image of an actor to play Ted Cruz in a low-budget porno”.
He added: “You have to fully remove your soul and your capacity for shame and self-reflection” to be Trump’s running mate.
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert said that early voting was already under way, adding: “You lucky bastards.”
While “polls are all over the place” there has been a spike in voter registration among young adults. The past week has seen Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, on the campaign trail.
A video of Walz talking about his truck and how he named his dog after it was played by Colbert. “That is peak middle America dad,” he said.
Harris was also interviewed by Oprah and made a comment about guns, saying: “If someone breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”
Colbert joked: “Santa, you were warned.”
Trump responded with a Truth Social post, saying: “This isn’t the real Oprah.”
Colbert joked that he probably “met the real Oprah once at Madame Tussauds”.
Trump also claimed at a recent rally that every new job in America over the past two years was taken by an undocumented person. “That seems insane,” Colbert said.
He also talked about how great his America would be for women, using words such as strong and safe and powerful, with Colbert saying it sounded more like he was “marketing a new brand of tampon”.
He also spoke about Robinson’s history of offensive comments on Nude Africa, joking that there were also Topless Antarctica and Just Butts Australia sites.
The news has led to four top staff members of Robinson resigning. “To ensure that Mark Robinson would read their resignation letters, they posted them to Nude Africa,” Colbert joked.
Jon Stewart
On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart showed “how fucking convoluted” some of the discourse around Israel and Palestine has become.
He played a clip from CNN where the phrase “de-escalation through escalation” was used to describe what Israel is doing. “Or as that is sometimes called: war,” he said. “Do you even hear yourself?”
He also said, “the country that’s providing all the bombs to the Middle East … seems to have no idea when these bombs are gonna be used,” before playing a montage of US officials claiming to have no awareness of recent attacks before they happened.
“Have you checked your pager?” Stewart asked.
He then said that while some have claimed any criticism of Netanyahu is antisemitic, many Israelis themselves have been “unbelievably critical” of what has been happening.
Stewart joked that despite fears of antisemitism being made worse by such critique, “I believe antisemitism will be fine.”
He added: “From what I’ve experienced, it’s very resilient and it’s not really tied to any event or activity or reality.”
