Late-night hosts covered the ongoing war in Iran and how the Trump administration is refusing to focus on rising gas prices back in the US.
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert told viewers it was day 69 of the war with Iran and despite Trump’s “one-page peace offer” it remains ongoing.
Republicans are hoping to get a deal before midterms with more than eight out of 10 Americans struggling to cope with rising gas prices. “The other two Americans couldn’t talk right now because they were busy sucking gas out of their neighbour’s Subaru,” he said.
The war is also affecting other supply chains with the McDonald’s CEO warning this week that it might affect the burger chain’s business. “Perhaps this will finally show Trump the true cost of war,” Colbert said before joking that without peace, he “could lose his 10-piece”.
Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett played down rising costs by saying on television this week that credit card spending is through the roof. Colbert added that “bottle collection has become very popular” and so has the job of “bus station gigolo”.
The administration continues to find new words to call the war, with Trump this week calling it a “skirmish”. Colbert joked that “my uncle never came home from the Korean hullaballoo”.
This week also saw Trump sending Marco Rubio to meet the pope. Rubio was given a pen made from olive wood to represent peace while the pope was given a small crystal football. “I smell regift!” Colbert said.
After the recent exposé in the Atlantic which alleged the FBI director, Kash Patel, had a serious drinking problem, the FBI launched a criminal leak investigation to find the source. Colbert joked that after a few beers, Patel also says: “Yo, I gotta go take a criminal leak.”
In response, the original journalist published a follow-up about Kash Patel’s personalised bourbon stash. “She done doubled down!” Colbert said.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also spoke about Rubio’s meeting at the Vatican “to patch up the off-again/off-again relationship” between Trump and the pope.
The president couldn’t go himself as when he enters a church “all the holy water starts to boil”.
Kimmel joked that the “pope mistook little Marco for a child and baptised him”.
He also spoke about the war in Iran that is not nearing an end with Iran firing on American warships this week, something Trump called “a love tap”. He is “quite clearly anxious to manage expectations on this thing” and this week posted a strange chart that showed how the Iran war is so much shorter than other conflicts.
“I bet that’s not the only chart that shows his is the shortest,” Kimmel said.
He also spoke about the new Kash Patel story in the Atlantic revealing that the FBI director hands out personalised whiskey bottles as gifts. Kimmel said they are “short and filled with alcohol just like Kash himself”.
Kimmel also reminded viewers of “the Trump-Epstein files”, as he calls them, and that the Iran war was “cooked up to knock that out of the headlines”.
This week saw Lara Trump, the wife of Eric, praise her father-in-law and try to shift focus on to UFOs instead. “Kiss his ass all you want, Lara, he’s still gonna call you Laura at Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers said that despite gas prices rising, Trump has been too busy “bragging about acing a dementia test”.
He said that despite having the “posture of the Michelin man”, Trump has been pushing the importance of physical and mental health.
Twice in the past week the president has spoken about nailing the cognitive test three times, bragging that no other president has taken it in the past. “Because no one else has had to!” Meyers said.
He said that despite all of the criticism aimed at Barack Obama, “no one ever thought: are we sure he can identify all three animals?”
He said it was “pretty alarming” that Trump has needed to take this test so much but that despite him clearly caring about mental health, his health secretary, RFK Jr, has made it harder for people to take antidepressants.
Meyers said he “probably just wants people to take cognitive tests to prove their sanity like Trump” and played footage of the president talking about all of the wild animals included in the questions.
He said that is “sounds like the menu at his favourite restaurant”, poking fun at RFK Jr’s odd comments in the past about animals.
This week also saw a “very important and very normal event” where Trump reintroduced the presidential fitness test to schoolchildren, which saw him do his much-ridiculed YMCA dance.
“That dance is the closest Trump has ever come to working out,” he said.