On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert focused on Maga’s escalating feud with the pope. Reacting to comments by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, that Pope Leo XIV misunderstood the concept of the just war doctrine, Colbert said incredulously:
“Correcting the pope on Catholic theology is a little like going into the woods and saying: ‘Excuse me Mr Bear, do you really think this is the appropriate place for you to be pooping? Who’s going to clean that up?”
Colbert went on to explain that the “just war” is a concept of Catholic doctrine that goes back to the earliest days of the church. “It must be in self-defense once all peace efforts have failed,” said the host. “Only then can the war can be said to have ‘just cause’. As opposed to Trump, who appears to have taken us to war just ’cause.”
On Thursday, Pope Leo seemed to react to Maga on social media with a tweet that read: “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”
“Damn, son, the pope just read you for darkness and filth,” Colbert said.
The host then moved to discuss Trump’s response to questions about how long Americans would continue to see high gas prices. Reacting to the president’s comments that they are, in fact, “not very high”, Colbert commented: “Are you very high?”
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel weighed in on Trump’s plans to build a triumphal arch in Washington DC, inspired by Paris’s Arc de Triomphe.
“The Arc de Triomphe has the names of generals who fought and died for France engraved on its face,” said Kimmel. “Ours will have the name of the draft dodger who killed America on it.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” joked the host. “It strikes the perfect balance between Scientology and Liberace that we have come to expect from our president.”
The host then turned to Trump taking credit for this week’s ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. “He said it is now the 10th war he’s ended,” said Kimmel. “I would love to ask him to list those wars that he’s ended. Not a chance he gets past No 4.”
This week, author Isabel Vincent released a biography of RFK Jr, which includes eyebrow-raising details about the politician, including a claim that he once pulled his car over to the side of the road to carve out the penis of a dead raccoon.
“I grew up in the 80s. Whose dad didn’t pull over to carve out a raccoon penis and study it later?” Kimmel joked. “That was the original ending to Zootopia, right?
“Now we have this guy telling us what to put in our bodies. He can’t drive past a festering animal without beheading its boner and throwing it in the back seat with his kids.”
Kimmel also addressed Kennedy’s appearance before the House ways and means committee on Thursday morning, where the health secretary drank from a plastic water bottle despite his regular warnings about the dangers of microplastics. “The ‘H’ in Maha stands for ‘hypocrite,’” the host joked.
RFK Jr was also questioned on his previous claims that “every Black kid” in America is put on Adderall, SSRIs and benzodiazepines, which he believes “induce violence”, and that those kids will have to be “reparented”.
RFK Jr claimed to not recall his statement, shaking his head in disbelief in front of the committee. But Kimmel played the original footage, commenting: “Think about how crazy you have to be to say something like that. And then not only you have no recollection of it – you think it sounds nuts and makes no sense. That’s the guy in charge of our children’s medications.”