Stephen Colbert
Late-night hosts mostly focused on Trump on Monday evening, though the jokes were overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war that claimed hundreds of lives over the weekend. “The Middle East is a complex region, but the complexity of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is immaterial to the horror of these attacks,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It is heartbreaking to see violence escalate and we hope and pray that someday peace is possible.”
“Now on this show, we all try our best to talk about what everybody’s talking about today,” he continued. “But we didn’t even attempt to write jokes about this. The human mind simply refuses to do it,” as did Chat GPT, which declined to make a joke based on the conflict. “I for one want to commend our future robot overlords,” Colbert mused. “That is a rare show of humanity from something that can’t identify which of these photos contain a traffic light.”
The Late Show host then turned to Trump, who is facing charges for, among many other things, mishandling classified documents at his Florida resort. “Thanks to the case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, we’re now learning how much he loved to wave our secrets for the guests at Mar-a-Lago,” Colbert explained, as Trump reportedly revealed nuclear submarine secrets to Australian businessman Anthony Pratt, a member of Mar-a-Lago.
“Yes, he heard that the guy came from down under and he thought, ‘That’s what submarines are, he should know,’” Colbert quipped.
Pratt told some 45 others about such sensitive material as the number of nuclear warheads US submarines can routinely carry and how close they can get to Russian submarines without being detected. “I know that sounds bad, but he’s Australian, OK? So it’s possible no one understands what he was saying,” Colbert joked.
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel also touched on the conflict in Israel and Gaza. “It’s a nightmare situation. Leaders from all around the world condemned the attack, as did millions of Americans, including our super-duper pro-Israel former president,” Kimmel lamented, as Trump “immediately found a way to make it about himself”.
In an all-caps post to Truth Social, Trump claimed that the “horrible attack on Israel, much like the attack on Ukraine, would never have happened if I were president – zero chance!”
“That’s right, if he were president, we’d all be blissfully downing jiggers of bleach. There’d be no war anywhere,” Kimmel deadpanned.
“Could you imagine anyone else in the world doing anything even remotely like that?” he continued. “The guy who claims to be the most pro-Israel president of all time was in Cedar Rapids on Saturday demonstrating the deep well of insight he has into this ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” in a speech where he pronounced Hamas like “hummus”.
“Yes the hummus, the baba ghanoush, what they’re doing is a disgrace,” Kimmel joked.
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers looked into rumors that Trump was lobbying to become speaker of the House after the historic expulsion of Kevin McCarthy last week. On Fox News, host Sean Hannity claimed that a “source” said Trump was open to supporting the Republican party “in the short term” by assuming the role of speaker.
“So the source was Trump,” Meyers declared. “If you hear Sean Hannity float something like that on television, it’s because of something Donald Trump told him to say. Or at the very least, it’s something Trump wants to hear. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump was writing the Fox News chyrons live in real time via voice to text.”
At a press conference outside his fraud trial in New York, Trump said he was considering the position, which Meyers found unsurprising. “Trump will always say he’s considering something when you first ask him about it,” he noted. “The reporter could stand up at a press conference and say, ‘Mr President, sources are telling us that you’re considering jumping into the gorilla enclosure at the Bronx zoo and challenging the largest ape to a wrestling match in order to subdue him, claim his territory and become king of the primates,’ and Trump would say, ‘We’re looking very strongly on it.’”
According to reports, Trump’s desire for the speakership goes back to at least January, when he convinced Florida Republican Matt Gaetz to write in his name. Multiple times, Trump only received one vote for speaker. “It was so bad, that night on Hannity the chyron said: ‘Actually, one vote is a very good number, some are saying the best number, can you bring me more ketchup for my steak?’” Meyers joked.
