Late-night hosts discuss JD Vance’s awkward doughnut shop interaction and Republicans’ attempts to turn the “weird” label back on Democrats.
Stephen Colbert
On Thursday’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert looked ahead to the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on Tuesday, airing on ABC. Trump previewed some of his debate arguments at a Fox News town hall in Pennsylvania this week, “which are mostly lies to scare people about Harris”, said Colbert.
Trump argued: “If she won, you’re not going to have any fracking in Pennsylvania. You have 500,000 jobs. It’s your biggest business … you have no choice.”
“‘You’ve got no choice’ isn’t the most exciting pitch,” said Colbert. “It’s like when Cracker Barrel changed their slogan to ‘Look, it’s us or the gas station.’”
Trump also appeared to be confused over his opponent, remarking: “I can’t imagine New Hampshire voting for him” – referring to Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris. “I can’t imagine anybody in New Hampshire voting for Biden. You know why? Because he’s not on the ballot anymore!” Colbert laughed.
Colbert also mocked Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, for an awkward campaign stop at a doughnut shop in Georgia where he “ordered the most fun food in the saddest way possible”.
After making strained small talk with the doughnut shop staff, Vance ordered: “A lot of glazed here, some sprinkle stuff. Some of these cinnamon rolls. Just whatever makes sense.”
“Whatever makes sense?! They’re doughnuts!” Colbert exclaimed. “They all make equal sense, which is none. They’re a breakfast that is dessert – eat any amount of them, and you will feel both full and starving.
“I’m not the only one having a little fun at JD Vance’s doughnut expense,” Colbert continued. So is Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz; while campaigning in Pennsylvania this week, the Minnesota governor remarked: “I have no problem picking out doughnuts.”
“Is JD Vance a doughnut? Because Walz is dunkin’ him,” Colbert quipped.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also relished Vance’s doughnut shop disaster. “I had such secondhand embarrassment watching that that I had to peer through my hands like it was a Saw movie,” he said. “This dude orders doughnuts like his kidnappers are watching him from the car – ‘I’ll take some glazed, jelly, whatever makes sense.’
“What do you mean whatever makes sense? You’re in a doughnut shop,” he continued. “You know what makes sense? Doughnuts! You know what doesn’t make sense? Anything else.”
The doughnut shop episode epitomizes how “Republicans can’t beat the weird charges”, said Meyers. “So now they’re trying to turn them back around on Democrats. But in doing so, they’re only making things worse.”
Meyers pointed to a strange clip from the Fox News host Jesse Watters, in which he claimed: “Women love masculinity and women do not love Tim Walz, so that should just tell you how masculine Tim Walz is. The other day you saw him with a vanilla ice-cream shake, had a straw in it. Again, that tells you everything.”
“Does it?” Meyers countered. “I don’t understand. Please explain it to me Jesse (girls name). What are you saying? It’s manlier to drink a milkshake without a straw? And then walk around all day with a milkshake mustache?”
Meyers then mocked Trump for trying to claim that he and Vance aren’t weird, but “very solid”.
“First of all, the opposite of weird isn’t ‘solid’. It’s ‘normal’,” he noted. “It’s something you might know if you weren’t – and, again, I wish there was a better word for this – so fucking weird. Second, just blurting out ‘we’re not weird guys!’ isn’t doing the work you think it is.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel recapped night two of Trump’s Fox News “clown hall”.
The host Sean Hannity “gave Trump another vigorous Hannity job as only he can”, he said, as Trump covered his favorite subjects and lied about Putin praising him and saying: “I’d hate to see you if you were really tough.”
“That is what I do with children,” Kimmel laughed. “Like when somebody introduces me to their kid, I’ll put my hand out for them to give me five, and then I’ll go, ‘Oh, oww, you’re strong!’
“That’s what Putin does to Trump. And it works!”
Kimmel also looked in the “weird” war. “Of all the insults he’s been hit with – the little hands, the baby carrot in his pants – the one that’s really making him nuts is Tim Walz calling him and JD Vance weird,” he said. “He hates this so much that he can’t stop bringing it up. And now when it comes to Tim Walz, his defense is: ‘I’m not weird, you’re weird.’”
As Trump put it in the town hall: “There’s something weird about that guy. He’s a weird guy. JD is not weird. He’s a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock.”
“Yeah, I’m just a regular guy who lives in a gold house and has an orange face,” Kimmel deadpanned.
