Jimmy Kimmel
Late-night hosts recapped Joe Biden’s meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in San Francisco on Wednesday, their first in over a year. Ahead of the meeting, Biden explained “we’re not trying to decouple from China. What we’re trying to do is change the relationship for the better.”
“In other words, for those of you who don’t follow international affairs,” explained Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday evening, “we’re Chris Martin and China is Gwyneth Paltrow, and we’re just trying to raise TikTok together.”
Kimmel also discussed Donald Trump’s use of the word “vermin” to describe enemies he sought to “root out”, which, as Biden pointed out, echoes terminology used in Nazi Germany. “I know a lot of people have been comparing Trump to Hitler lately, but there are some major differences between them,” Kimmel said. “For instance, Hitler was married to a woman who loved him.
“And I get why people believe Trump is intentionally using words the Nazi used, I just don’t agree that he is,” he continued. “In order to know what words the Nazis used, you’d have to read. You’d have to have some basic knowledge of history. Trump thinks Frederick Douglass is alive and doing a great job. He thinks Lincoln invented the Town Car, OK?
“He isn’t echoing Nazi terminology; he’s coming up with it all on his own,” he concluded. “And you have to give him credit where credit is due, you know?”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert remarked on all that has changed in the year since Biden and Xi last met. “They’ll have so much to talk about! Trade tensions, global flashpoints, who got hot over the summer. Spoiler alert: neither of them!
“Before the meeting both sides tried to play it cool and set expectations low,” with both countries promising to not release a joint statement after the meeting. “So it’s just going to be case of he said, Xi said,” Colbert quipped.
China’s reason for engaging with America? Cash, Colbert argued, as its economy has weathered anemic consumer spending and high youth unemployment. “It’s gotten so bad that second-graders can’t get a job at the iPhone factory,” Colbert deadpanned. “And I’m being told that in response to that joke, Apple has canceled Jon Stewart again.”
In other news, “Washington is increasingly a toxic dump,” Colbert said. But there was a “glimmer of governance” on Tuesday when the House approved a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown, the first major piece of legislation passed by the new speaker, Mike Johnson.
Unlike a previous stopgap measure passed by his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, Johnson’s “two-step” stopgap will fund certain parts of the government into mid-January, and others into February. “That is genius, because instead of just kicking the can down the road, Mike Johnson cut the can in half,” Colbert joked. “So now they have to kick two smaller cans down two longer roads.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers derided the congressional “fight club” after the former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy elbowed fellow Republican representative Tim Burchett in the back in full view of a reporter.
Burchett initially apologized to McCarthy, thinking he had bumped into him, then realized what had happened and called him pathetic.
“This is how insane the infighting is in the GOP right now. People don’t know if they should apologize or if they were physically assaulted,” Meyers laughed. “You don’t expect the guy who was three steps away from president to do that. You expect the guy who was actually president to do that.
“I should not imply that Trump ever sucker-punched anyone, he added. “The worst thing he ever did was try to sucker-kiss Mike Pence.”
Burchett later expressed disbelief that McCarthy had initially punched him, but “do you really not expect your fellow Republicans to sucker-punch each other after everything you’ve witnessed?” Meyers wondered. “A sucker-punch seems quaint, at this point.”
The incident followed threats made by Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who challenged the leader of the Teamsters, Sean O’Brien, to a fight during a Senate hearing. On Fox News, Mullin defended violence as a historical tactic in Congress, citing 19th-century president Andrew Jackson’s many duels – “maybe we should bring some of that back?”
“People also used to wear wooden teeth and burlap pants but we also don’t do that shit any more either!” Meyers retorted.
