Late-night hosts talked the end of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, the arrest of the alleged UnitedHealthcare shooter and Donald Trump’s latest inappropriate ad.
The Daily Show
“We can often get cynical about the state of things in the world,” said Jon Stewart from his usual Monday night perch on the Daily Show. But the images of Syrians celebrating in the street after rebels liberated the country from the repressive, brutal Assad regime offered something different: “a moment in time of pure, unalloyed joy”, said Stewart. “The delirious, almost uncomprehending excitement for a people celebrating a suddenly bright and hopeful new future.”
Many Syrians around the world cheered the end of the 50-year rule of the “murderous, despotic Assad family” this weekend, “a result that would’ve seemed incomprehensible even two weeks ago”, Stewart explained.
“You know it’s the real deal because they sealed it with the universal symbol of fallen dictatorships: the traditional toppling of the statues,” he added. “They pulled them down with rope. They toppled the horse one! They knocked over the one where Assad signaled field goal. They even paraded Assad’s head through the streets like a decapitated Charlie Brown in the Macy’s Day Parade.”
Stewart also checked in on the “incoming United States president and, I’m assuming, future statue haver” Trump, who visited Paris last weekend to continue the “long American tradition of not waiting for the inauguration to become president and head overseas and meet with allies and remind everybody how fucking weird he is about shaking hands”.
At the reopening ceremony for Notre Dame cathedral, Trump sat next to Jill Biden. “It was a rare moment of conciliation that would’ve given this country hope,” Stewart said, “had it not been immediately been undermined by the returning president releasing an actual cologne belittling and sexualizing the moment.”
The ad, selling a “a fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” marketed Trump’s cologne for $199 a pop.
“You won!” Stewart scolded. “You don’t have to push merch any more. I find it hard to believe I’m saying this, but it’s beneath you.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped Trump’s his first sit-down interview since the election. NBC’s Kirsten Welker asked him to reassure Americans that his policies would not make things worse. “I can’t guarantee anything,” Trump answered. “I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”
“What?!?” asked Meyers. “When you were campaigning, you were guaranteeing everything. ‘Prices will come down, America will be respected.’ And now that you’ve won, you’re coming off like an inspirational Instagram post.”
“It’s not a great sign that the incoming president talks like a depressed existential philosopher,” he added. “He sounds like a character from a French New Wave film.”
“Trump suddenly can’t guarantee that his policies won’t do the one thing he consistently promised not to do, and the one thing everyone said they would do, and that’s for an obvious reason,” Meyers continued.
“Tariffs raise prices. Everyone knows that,” he said. “If you want to argue that tariffs are necessary to curtail foreign imports of stuff like cars or steel in order to boost domestic production of those things, then fine. But you can’t argue they magically lower prices when they do the opposite.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert got into the discourse around the shooter of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. On Monday, police arrested a man in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in connection with the murder. Colbert wouldn’t say his name on air, but “his name is comically close to Guido Casserole”, he said.
“Classic bad guy mistake – fleeing to one of America’s funny-named towns,” Colbert added. “Police will always find you right away, whether it’s Altoona, Pennsylvania, Rancho Cucamonga, California, or Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
“This story started tragic, and then it very quickly added weird because when authorities initially released security photos of the suspect, the internet reaction was swift and horny,” Colbert said, referring to a shirtless photo on Mangione’s Twitter account. “You know that guy’s Italian, because you could grate parmesan on those abs.”
Colbert also touched on the end of the Assad regime in Syria, known for using chemical weapons on its own people. “So it’s no surprise that after he fled to Moscow, those people took to the streets, joyfully riding a torn-down statue of Assad’s father like a parade float,” he explained. “Pride month is different there.”
In other news, Trump doubled down in a new interview on his promise to not only pardon January 6 criminals, but put the prosecutors of those cases in jail.
“Nothing to see here, folks, he just wants to jail his political opponents,” said Colbert. “But hey, on the bright side, 13 years from now, maybe rebels will be taking a fun sleigh ride on a statue of him.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“This is going to seem like a joke we made up,” said Jimmy Kimmel of Trump’s Notre Dame cologne ad. “This is not a joke we made up. This is a real advertisement for the Donald Trump fragrance line.
“I guess he had to use that picture because he doesn’t have a picture of his own wife smiling at him,” Kimmel quipped.
“Let me just restate something for you: he used a photo taken inside Notre Dame cathedral to promote his cologne,” he continued. “Say what you will about Donald Trump – he’s the only president in history who’s done that.
“And it’s important to remember, these are the official Trump fragrances,” he added. “Not to be confused with the silent but deadly fragrances that he releases while flatulating himself to sleep in a courtroom setting.”
