Late-night hosts talk Trump’s refusal to back down from false stories about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and JD Vance admitting to making up stories.
Seth Meyers
Back from the Emmys in Los Angeles, Seth Meyers blasted Donald Trump for his refusal to condemn bomb threats in schools in Springfield, Ohio, after the ex-president falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in the town were eating residents’ pets. “How hard is it to denounce bomb threats against schools?” the Late Night host fumed.
The story has been debunked by local officials and the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine. The mayor of Springfield, a Republican, blamed “all these federal politicians that have negatively spun our city, they need to know they’re hurting our city, and it was their words that did it”.
“And yet, JD Vance doubled down anyway,” said Meyers. Appearing on CNN with Dana Bash, Vance said: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do … because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
“So now it’s OK to just create stories, JD Vance, you serial couch fucker?” Meyers laughed. “And Vance, it should be noted, is a terrible storyteller. I’d hate to see this charmless piece of driftwood read a book to a class of kindergarteners.”
“I can’t believe I have to say this, but there is a difference between saying true things and false things,” Meyers concluded. “Saying true things about powerful people, it’s OK. Saying false things, especially about vulnerable, powerless people, is wrong.”
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert first addressed an apparent second Trump assassination attempt on Sunday at his golf course at Mar-a-Lago. “I just want to state the obvious right off the bat: political violence has no place in America,” said Colbert, before sending a message to America’s gun owners specifically: “Don’t shoot anyone. If you have even the vaguest idea that you might shoot someone, sell your gun and use that money to buy yourself a little treat, like pancakes at IHop.”
A “truly deranged” man, Ryan Routh, hid out at Mar-a-Lago for 12 hours before a Secret Service agent spotted the muzzle of his rifle sticking out from some shrubbery. “That sounds like an evil plot straight out of Looney Tunes,” said Colbert.
Given that Trump’s schedule had not been made public that day, some wondered: did the would-be shooter know that Trump would be playing golf, or was it a guess? “How could he have possibly guessed that Trump would be golfing?” Colbert deadpanned. “That’s as unforeseeable as Pitbull up in the club with some big booty mamis.”
Routh, it turns out, has a long criminal record; the longtime North Carolina resident most recently lived in Hawaii before traveling to Florida. “First clue he’s insane? He left Hawaii for Florida,” Colbert joked.
Colbert also criticized Vance for “making no effort to tone down the rhetoric” as he “pushed his hateful lie about Haitian immigrants” at a rally in Michigan. And he needled Trump’s running mate for essentially admitting to his lies on CNN, “creating stories” about migrants to get media attention.
“Yes, it’s true, in these divisive times, sometimes you have to create a lie just to get attention,” said Colbert. “JD Vance knows this personally because he’s also the victim of a hateful rumor that he had sex with a couch. And I want to repeat, he did not have sex with a couch … because I am now hearing that on that night, he could not perform.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“This was definitely not the morning you want to wake up feeling like P Diddy,” said Jimmy Kimmel, referring to the arrest of the music mogul in New York for sex-trafficking and racketeering charges. The rapper pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers said he would clear his name. “And you know he’s got a lot of them to clear,” Kimmel quipped.
In other news, Trump “took a break from protecting our geese” to launch a new Trump cryptocurrency, called World Liberty Financial. “They say they’re legit, they’re working with top security experts in the world, including Zokio, Fuzz Land, PeckShield and other top companies with names that sound like sex toy manufacturers,” Kimmel laughed.
“If there’s one thing that’s clear, it’s that when it comes to this new digital currency, Donald Trump really knows his stuff,” said Kimmel, quoting an interview on X Spaces in which Trump confused cryptocurrency and AI and appeared to know nothing about the technology. “All he knows about crypto is that he’s getting money from it.”
According to Bloomberg, “the platform isn’t owned, managed, operated or sold by any of [the Trumps],” Kimmel added, “which is something I look forward to hearing them say repeatedly in four years when this gets them all arrested.”
