Late-night hosts ridiculed Donald Trump and JD Vance for their hollow attempts to appeal to working-class voters while also detailing the president’s latest unhinged attack on a reporter.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers said that Republicans had been “cosplaying as regular, everyday folks” for a while, showing clips of Donald Trump working at McDonald’s and the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, claiming to be a soybean farmer.
This week the right continued to lose their minds over a joke made by Barack Obama, comparing Trump’s White House to Saddam Hussein decorating a Cheesecake Factory.
They were less bothered about the comparison to a “violent oppressive dictator” and more about a perceived slight towards a popular restaurant chain, organising an unsuccessful press opportunity outside one that Bessent was visiting.
Obama responded with more jabs, leading Meyers to say that “standup comedy Obama is back” and joked that his next special will be called Hussein in the Membrane.
Meyers also quipped that Rudy Guiliani “missed it because he showed up at the Cheesecake Factory Total Landscaping”.
Meyers called it “rightwing fan fiction” that Trump was a “true man of the people”, a claim that was “such obvious bullshit”.
This week also saw JD Vance claim that he can’t pronounce the names of countries in the Middle East when talking to audience members at a rally.
“No one’s buying your fake folksy bullshit,” Meyers said, reminding his viewers how rich and entitled Vance is.
He did joke that “if Trump said he couldn’t pronounce the names then I would believe that” then playing a clip of him stumbling over countries.
The right has also been obsessing over James Talarico, the Democratic candidate in Texas who “isn’t a real American because he secretly doesn’t like meat” with Trump claiming he is a vegan yet mispronouncing the word.
“Trump’s just gone full goblin now,” he said after playing a strange clip of him talking about meat.
Yet it was “not the most bizarre insult” from the right, with Ted Cruz saying that if you picked 1,000 adjectives for Talarico, the list wouldn’t include the word masculine.
“Do you think you’re masculine just because you grew 65% of a beard?” he asked.
There have also been some “truly revolting attacks” on the Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, with Republicans calling him many things including a jihadist.
“It’s disgusting how nakedly racist this is,” Meyers said before adding that it “seems like these tactics are backfiring” given poll numbers.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host spoke about Trump having a tantrum after a reporter asked him if he was feeling well given a last-minute change in his schedule.
He responded by calling him sick and making jabs at his weight.
“Natalie, baby’s cranky again, we need a diaper change on runway two,” he said before adding “imagine him calling someone else out of shape”.
Kimmel suggested someone taking “him out to that reflecting pool” so he can see himself, adding that it was the “pot calling the belly fat”.
His rallies “used to be Team Trump through and through” yet more and more interlopers have found their way in. This week saw an Ohio heckler shout that Trump went on “the Jeffrey Epstein plane” and his fans responded with boos.
“They’re booing the wrong guy!” Kimmel said.
Trump has continued to brag about passing his cognitive tests, something “they give old people to make sure they can wipe themselves”.
Kimmel said his brain was “made of apple sauce”.
He also played clips of Obama responding to the outrage over the Cheesecake Factory joke saying that we “traded in a Ferrari for a folding chair”.
Kimmel joked that, for Trump, the Cheesecake Factory menu was the “closest he gets to reading a book”.
This week has also seen Trump’s infamously terrible ex-press secretary Katie Zacharia “trying to repair her image” with a string of interviews, including a disastrous one with Piers Morgan.
Kimmel played footage of her “glitching” when trying to avoid a question, saying that someone should “maybe unplug her and plug her back in”.
He went on to beg Trump to “bring her back just until Christmas”.
