Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged a new era for Netflix on Thursday evening, as the streaming platform launched their new ad-supported subscription plan. “Commercials on TV – what will Netflix think of next? Movies in theaters?” he joked.
“It’s funny, most kids today don’t even know what commercials are,” he added. “I don’t think that’s healthy. By the time you’re 10 years old, you should know the Pillsbury Doughboy, you should know the Michelin Man, you should know that mentally ill Coco Puffs bird. You should know them. It’s part of being American.”
Kimmel facetiously congratulated Netflix: “Welcome to the gutter with the rest of us!”
In more pressing news, Joe Biden addressed the state of democracy on Wednesday – “Make no mistake: democracy is on the ballot for all of us,” he said in a nationally televised address urging Americans to take a stand against political violence.
The speech, in which Biden called out Republicans led by Trump bent on discrediting the election process they’re running in, “felt like Gandalf talking about Sauron”, said Kimmel. “‘Tell your master the armies of Mordor must disband.’”
Kimmel noted the “tough decision ahead” with the midterm elections on Tuesday. “On the one hand, democracy is being threatened by extremists who want power at all costs, even if it means burning us to the ground,” he said. “On the other hand, gas is $4 a gallon now.”
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also took in the concerning state of affairs just days before the midterm elections. “The main thing holding Republicans back, it seems, is that they’ve nominated some spectacularly shit candidates,” he said, such as Dr Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, “who doesn’t seem to know exactly where Pennsylvania is”.
Or Herschel Walker, the US Senate candidate from Georgia, who has lied repeatedly about his employment history and about his stance on abortion. (Walker, an anti-abortion candidate, has allegedly paid for the abortions of at least two ex-girlfriends.) After Barack Obama campaigned for Walker’s rival Raphael Warnock over the weekend, Walker compared himself favorably to the former president: “My résumé against his résumé, I’ll put it up any time of the day.”
“You do?” Meyers mocked. “That’s like me saying ‘Einstein, I’m way smarter than him. That dope could never do a Day Drinking with Post Malone.”
It would be normal and expected for Democrats to lose seats in next week’s elections, as conventional wisdom holds that the party in power does worse in the midertms. “However, it’s now incredibly abnormal and potentially very dangerous because one of our two major political parties is fundamentally opposed to democracy,” said Meyers. “They just don’t accept the outcome of elections they don’t win.”
Meyers pointed to the GOP candidate for governor in Wisconsin, Tim Michels, who said at a campaign stop: “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”
“Does this guy know he’s in public, on camera? With like reporters and people around?” Meyers wondered. “Because he just admitted to something incredibly nefarious. It’s like if a Bond villain livestreamed their plan to kill Bond on Instagram.”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also recapped Biden’s address to Americans about the fragile state of democracy, “not from the Oval Office but from a place even more sacred to him: train station.”
A visibly concerned Biden told Americans that “in our bones, we know democracy is at risk.”
“Biden is clearly at that age where he receives all his information via bones,” Colbert joked.
The president also participated in a video with his 18-year-old granddaughter Natalie Biden as she voted for the first time, then celebrated with ice-cream. “Classic Biden – every moment ends with ice-cream,” Colbert quipped. “Anything good – go to the ice-cream.”
The host then turned to Walker’s request to compare his résumé against Barack Obama’s. Colbert listed some of Obama’s accomplishments: first black president of the Harvard Law Review, US senator, president for two terms, winner of the Nobel peace prize and an Emmy, three bestselling books and a multimillion-dollar book deal. Herschel Walker? “Good at football, holds Georgia’s single-season pregnancy record, and brain broke,” said Colbert. “Hard to tell them apart!”
Trevor Noah
Herschel Walker wants to put his resume up against Barack Obama's? Hmm... pic.twitter.com/Xwbvzic1Xy
— The Daily Show in Atlanta (@TheDailyShow) November 4, 2022
And on the Daily Show, Trevor Noah continued to mock Walker’s campaign for Senate in Georgia. “Herschel Walker has gone from beefing with reality to beefing with Barack Obama,” Noah said onstage in Atlanta.
“First of all, it wouldn’t even matter if Walker’s résumé was more impressive than Obama’s because Obama has a line in his résumé that says ‘not crazy’,” Noah joked. “That carries a lot of weight in a job interview.
“But also, Obama was president,” he continued. “For two terms! Herschel Walker can’t even carry any of his pregnancies to two terms, what are you talking about?
“Any résumé is impressive when you can just make it up.”
