Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers delved into the single dominant non-Trump headline of the weekend: the presence of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the continental US, which the military shot down over the Atlantic on Saturday. “The only way this balloon could’ve had a higher profile is if it had its own Instagram account,” the Late Night host said on Monday evening. “This balloon did more traveling than a high school senior taking a gap year before college.”
The Chinese government claimed the high-altitude balloon, which crossed into the lower 48 over Idaho and Montana, flew over the midwest and was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, was for meteorological purposes, though the US insists it was spying.
“There’s something about it being a balloon that just makes it very hard to take seriously,” Meyers noted. “Like it would be one thing to send a fleet of fighter jets or a giant naval vessel, that would be scary. But a balloon? Are they trying to scare us or cheer us up at the hospital?”
Nevertheless, the balloon was an “especially big hit” on Fox News, whose “human news balloons could not stop obsessing over it” like “a five-year-old at a birthday party”.
Among the theories put forth by Fox News anchors: that the balloon carried a virus, that it ferried bioweapons and that it was somehow evidence of a long-running rightwing conspiracy theory involving Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“In their minds, what did they think was going on here?” Meyers wondered. “Biden’s son Hunter was somehow compromised by China, so in return, Joe Biden made a secret deal with the Chinese government to allow him to fly a giant, super-visible balloon over the country for a few days before shooting it down?”
“If that’s the case”, he added, “I think it’s actually a terrible story for China, because that is a very bad deal.”
The Daily Show
Poor Joe Biden. Obama got to order the assassination of Bin Laden, and all he gets to do is murder a bag of helium. @chelseahandler pic.twitter.com/Qms7evIelz
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 7, 2023
On The Daily Show, new guest host Chelsea Handler sympathized with Biden’s dilemma over how to handle the Chinese balloon. “Poor Joe Biden,” she said. “Obama got to order the assassination of Bin Laden, and all he gets to do is murder a bag of helium.”
Biden ordered the balloon shot down over water, accomplished by a single missile fired from a F-22 Raptor fighter jet that took off from Langley air force base in Virginia.
“As usual, America went haywire and brought out way too much firepower to address this problem,” Handler explained. “Was that really necessary? Couldn’t we have just hired another hot air balloon to float by and shoot it with a BB gun? Or just waited for it to get stuck in a ceiling fan? Do we really need the fighter jets to turn this thing into the world’s saddest used condom?
“But hey, why not shoot it when you have a trillion-dollar defense budget and all these rock-hard missiles lying around?” she continued. “Trump must be so jealous.”
The one part she didn’t get was the purpose behind the balloon. “Why does China even need to send this balloon in the first place?” she wondered. “They’re already spying on us with TikTok. Is it possible that the Chinese spies became the first people ever to get sick of TikTok? Were they like ‘I swear to God, if I see one more basic bitch make lasagna in a slow cooker … ’”
Jimmy Fallon
And on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon recapped Sunday’s Grammy awards, which lasted nearly four hours. “That’s dangerous, because every CBS viewer knows that if it lasts longer than four hours, they should call their doctor,” he joked.
“Although an hour of that was just stalling until Beyoncé showed up,” he added, noting that the singer, now the most decorated artist in Grammys history with 32 wins, was unable to collect her 31st award because she was stuck in traffic. “At this point, I’m surprised she didn’t just get out and part the sea of cars like Moses.
“Seriously, if you think your job is stressful, imagine being the limo driver who got Beyoncé stuck in traffic on the night she’s making history,” he joked.
Fallon then turned to the Chinese balloon. “Instead of a medal, the pilot who popped the balloon got to pick any stuffed animal on the top shelf,” he joked. “The US didn’t really have a choice – the only other option was to rub the balloon on Bernie Sanders and stick it to Canada.”
