Late-night hosts acknowledged one full, maniacal year of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States.
Stephen Colbert
Tuesday 20 January, marked one full year of Trump’s second presidency, and “during that time, he has monopolized our attention every second of every minute of every hour of every day,” said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “Which is sad. Because today we’re not focusing on the real meaning of January 20: it’s Penguin Awareness Day.”
On a more serious note, “a lot has happened in a short time”, the host noted. “This year alone, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, held a giant military parade on his birthday, said he wants Canada to be our 51st state, signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship, tore down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom, covered the remaining parts of the White House in golden gewgaws, forced Paramount to make Rush Hour 4, made himself the chair of the Kennedy Center board and then renamed it the Trump Kennedy Center, and personally pocketed over $1.4bn. And guess what? You didn’t remember most of that stuff.”
Every day, he continued, there’s “some new Trump horror dominating the headlines”, the whole point being that “today’s maniacal criminality distracts us from yesterday’s maniac crimes. Which reminds me: where are the Epstein files?
“The last year has been exhausting,” he concluded. “And not just for us. That’s why Trump’s always falling asleep.”
The host then played a series of borderline unintelligible clips from Trump’s two-hour press conference at the White House on Tuesday. “Is it still technically sundowning if it happens at 2 o’clock in the afternoon?” he wondered. “I’m asking for an entire world.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of white people celebrated the legacy of Martin Luther King by going skiing, just as Dr King would have wanted it,” joked Jimmy Kimmel in his first monologue since the January holiday. “You know, Donald Trump also had a dream, but his was about Ivanka in a tube top.
“I have a confession to make: I spent the whole day yesterday judging Trump on the content of his character and the color of his skin,” he added. “Neither verdict were good.
“What a weekend for Trump,” he continued. “You really almost have to hand it to him – he can do so much damage in one three-day weekend. I don’t know if anybody has ever done more. Every country hates us now. It’s official: all of them hate us. We are the Omarosa of the world.”
Kimmel took specific issue with the fact that Trump was “so angry about getting snubbed for the Nobel peace prize, he may literally declare war against Scandinavia, the happiest people on Earth.”
“Our president sent a text to the leader of another country, which, by the way, is already a weird thing,” he noted, referring to a message Trump sent to the Norwegian prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, stating his intent to control Greenland: “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
“The idea that he’s typing out a bitchy little message to the prime minister of Norway, a message that explicitly says, ‘Since you didn’t give me the peace prize, I’m thinking about taking Greenland away’ – it’s unheard of,” said Kimmel. “There’s nothing to compare it to in the history of humankind. This man is crashing the plane because the stewardess didn’t bring him a bag of peanuts.”
Kimmel also touched on the screenshots Trump posted on Truth Social of text messages from other world leaders, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “It’s so interesting to read these, because they really do tiptoe around this maniac,” the host said, before pointing to a line from Macron’s text: “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.”
“That makes 8.1 billion of us, friend,” Kimmel replied.
“Does he think this makes him look good?” Kimmel wondered of Trump’s decision to post the private texts. “Every one of these texts reads like they’re talking to a chimp with a hand grenade.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers acknowledged the first anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration, “and I’ll be celebrating with the traditional first anniversary gift: paper”, he quipped next to a photo of a lit marijuana joint.
The host then touched on a video released by Trump last week, in which he called on Congress to pass his “great healthcare plan” and said “under this policy, the prices of many drugs will be slashed by 300, 400 and even 500%.”
“Once again, 100% is the most you can lower a price,” Meyers said. “How did you ever run a casino? Oh right, briefly.”
In other White House news, the vice-president, JD Vance, and his wife, Usha, are set to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics next month, “partly as a diplomatic move, and partly to shop for new countries to threaten”, Meyers joked.
And the first lady, Melania Trump, spoke last week at an event hosted by the video call service Zoom – “kind of surprising for someone who’s spent the last 10 years on mute”, Meyers quipped.
