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    Stephen Colbert on JD Vance’s water level raising: ‘Insane spoiled baby emperor move’

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    Late-night hosts took aim at JD Vance over his unusual birthday demand and Donald Trump over his disastrous tariffs.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert called it “a significant day for our economy” with Trump’s controversial tariffs finally kicking in. He said it’s a day to “set your clocks back to more expensive” with import taxes now the highest they’ve been since the Great Depression.Colbert said it’s “never a great sign to be compared to the worst thing ever”.Tariffs on certain countries are lower if negotiations have been successful or “if the president’s mad at you they can be much higher”.This week saw Apple announce $100bn worth of additional investment in the US, but there is a smaller pool of American workers with the skills necessary to make an iPhone. “I believe America’s children can do anything!” Colbert joked.The company’s CEO, Tim Cook, was filmed this week in the Oval Office giving Trump a gift which was partly made of 24-carat gold. Colbert called it “lavish corporate bottom-smooching”.In the same press opportunity, Trump again slammed Colbert for having “no talent” but did concede that he has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon, whom he said also had no talent. “We’re all equally untalented,” Colbert said, before adding: “Thank you for watching, sir.”Colbert said that while we are “plunging headfirst into techno-feudalism”, the Secret Service is busy raising the water level of an Ohio river for Vance’s family boat trip to celebrate his birthday. He called it an “insane spoiled baby emperor move”.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers said that Trump “clearly has no interest in doing the job of president” and doesn’t “know or care what his own administration is doing on a daily basis”.He is too busy renovating the White House with plans revealed this week for a new $200m ballroom decked out in gold. Trump has said it’s important as there hasn’t been a president like him who has been good at ballrooms before.Meyers commented that it’s “never been a problem that our presidents weren’t good at ballrooms”.To show how little Trump knows about the day-to-day, he played a clip just after the US illegally bombed Iran in which he was told by a reporter that the intelligence community said it had no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon, which the president called false.This week when he was asked about Robert F Kennedy Jr’s decision to cancel $500m in contracts for vaccine development, he also appeared confused. “For a guy who watches cable news all day, you sure seem caught off-guard by the news,” Meyers said.There are also plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, a decision bragged about on Fox News with claims that “Trump doesn’t play by the rules”. Meyers admitted that this is true as at Nasa, rule No 1 is “don’t blow up the moon”.Ignoring the inflation that’s ballooning thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs, the administration is instead having to deal with the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Trump “flew into a rage again” after being asked about it this week.It’s still proving to be “explosive for Trump and his Maga base” and so this week a dinner was planned on Epstein strategy involving high-ranking loyalists. Nothing like a “secretive cabal” of powerful people to settle the conspiracy theorists, Meyers noted.It was reportedly planned by Vance, whom Trump threw under the bus when he was asked about it this week. “No matter how much you try to appease Trump or suck up to him, he’s eventually going to betray you,” he said. More

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      Seth Meyers on the Epstein conspiracy: ‘This is a crisis of Trump’s making’

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      Late-night hosts discussed the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the “spite” behind Donald Trump’s impending tariffs.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about the theories circulating over the death of Epstein, spurred on by the alleged missing minute from his jail cell video on the night of his death.He said that Trump is not in the right place to be handling it, as he’s “old” and “tired” and just came back from a golfing vacation in Scotland.While there, he opened a private new golf course, which was on the official White House live stream. “They’re not even pretending any more, there’s no separation,” Meyers said.Trump is “tired from all his golfing and self-enrichment” and was recently seen trying not to fall asleep during a press briefing with Mehmet Oz. “Imagine if Joe Biden did this,” he said.Meyers added that “he can’t hear or understand reporters’ questions any more” before playing footage of him getting confused over a recent question about Russia.Trump has been asked why he cut ties with Epstein and recently said he didn’t want to waste people’s time by going through the details. “Please, my man, waste our time!” Meyers said.He then “dug the hole even deeper” and “made it so much worse” by rambling on about Epstein stealing workers from his spa, which he said was one of the best spas in the world. “Stop talking about the spa – is it your safe word?” Meyers asked.But it’s “not just Trump who keeps digging a hole for himself”, there’s also Dan Bongino, an Epstein-obsessed podcaster who is now the deputy director of the FBI.Despite him claiming that the full, unedited tape would be released, experts have said that while it might be “unclear how much time is missing”, this isn’t the full tape after all.“This whole thing is a crisis of Trump’s making,” he said.Stephen ColbertOn The Late Show, Stephen Colbert reminded viewers that it was the last day of July, which means that the “basket of deplorable tariffs are gonna kick in” the day after.Trump had originally claimed he had made 200 deals ready for 1 August but “on the other hand, no he didn’t”, with just eight in place before the deadline.Colbert said that “his demands are insane” and many of the countries are included “just for spite”.This week also saw him revive the presidential fitness test for American schoolchildren so they could be “as fit as President Trump”. It had originally been retired in 2012 for a switch to a focus on individual health rather than athletic feats.Trump signed the executive order flanked by athletes, including former NFL star Lawrence Taylor, who is a registered sex offender. Colbert called it “a brilliant way to distance yourself from the whole Epstein scandal”.This week also saw lawyer Alan Dershowitz, known for clients such as OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Trump, make further complaints about how he is shunned while in Martha’s Vineyard.He had previously complained that his politics had made him a social pariah, but now he is suing a vendor who refused to serve him pierogi. He was later seen speaking to a police officer about the incident.“They have bigger crimes to investigate, like someone’s houseguest bringing a domestic chardonnay,” Colbert quipped. More

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      Trump claims new CBS owner will gift him $20m worth of airtime after $16m settlement

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      Donald Trump has claimed that the future owner of the US TV network CBS will provide him with $20m worth of advertising and programming – days after the network canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.The US president recently reached a $16m settlement with Paramount, the parent of CBS News, over what he claimed was misleading editing of a pre-election interview with the Democratic candidate for president, Kamala Harris.While CBS initially called the lawsuit “completely without merit”, a view shared by many legal experts, Paramount is in the midst of an $8bn sale to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media, which requires the approval of federal regulators.In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed the settlement had been paid – and that he was expecting much more from the new owners of Paramount.“Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs [public service announcements], or similar Programming, for a total of over $36 Million Dollars,” he wrote.CBS and Skydance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Trump’s claim that he has been offered millions of dollars’ worth of programming is likely to exacerbate anger over the axing of The Late Show, which CBS announced on Thursday.Days earlier, Colbert, a high-profile critic of Trump, had branded Paramount’s settlement with Trump “a big fat bribe”. He is due to remain on air until May, and declared on Monday that “the gloves are off”.Skydance was founded in 2010 by David Ellison, son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, and an ally of Trump.The $16m settlement was already seen by critics as a further example of capitulation by media companies hoping to smooth the waters with the US president. ABC News, ultimately owned by Disney, also agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit over its coverage.After Trump’s latest claim regarding $20m worth of advertising and programming from Paramount, the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter: “This reeks of corruption.” More

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      Losing Stephen Colbert and the Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason | Adrian Horton

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      Last Thursday, when Stephen Colbert announced on air that CBS had decided to cancel The Late Show, its flagship late-night comedy program, after 33 years in May of next year, I was shocked.For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.Reporting in the days since the announcement have lent some credence to CBS’s claim that this was “purely a financial decision”. Though The Late Show has led the field of late-night comedy in ratings for years, it only averages about 2.47 million viewers a night. Its ad revenue plummeted after the pandemic; Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the show loses $40m for CBS every year. Of the network late-night shows – NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – Colbert’s Late Show has the smallest footprint on social media, where Fallon’s celebrity gags still reign supreme. The format of late-night television – a host delivering a topical monologue, house band, celebrity guest interviews – is a living relic of a different time, when a youth-skewing audience would reliably pop on linear television at 11.30pm. The field has been contracting for years, with programs hosted by Samantha Bee, James Corden and Taylor Tomlinson ending without replacement. Ad revenue for the genre as a whole is down 50% from just seven years ago, in the middle of Trump 1.0. It’s long been assumed that the hosts currently in these once-coveted chairs would be the last, their programs expiring when they decided to step down.What’s shocking is that Colbert, who was reportedly set to renegotiate his one-year contract at the end of this season, was not given that time, which just so happens to coincide with a critical window for the intended merger of CBS parent company Paramount with Skydance Media. Three days before the announcement, Colbert called Paramount’s settlement with Trump a “big fat bribe” to incentivize the administration’s approval of this $8bn deal managed by two billionaire families.Regardless of Colbert’s contract timing, it seems the cancellation of The Late Show is a financial decision, just not in the way CBS is framing it. It’s not about the $40m The Late Show is losing per year – a lot of money, to be sure, though a drop in the bucket for the major players here – but the $8bn on the line with this merger. There were presumably other options; Late Night With Seth Meyers dispensed of its house band and musical acts last year to save money. With new billionaire ownership, there could be some business maneuvering, should independent political comedy be a priority. Colbert’s Late Show, a leading critic of Donald Trump on network television, is clearly not; the show may have been a money loser, but in this context, it’s a convenient sacrifice.And though it’s easy to roll one’s eyes at late-night television – I often do – it’s an especially disappointing one, both in the culture at large and in the dwindling 11.35pm time slot. For years, I have argued that the late-night shows have long outstripped their original function as comedy programs. They are satirical, occasionally relevant, sometimes profane, but hardly ever funny, in the traditional sense of making you laugh. Often, they resort to so-called “clapter” – laughter as a polite applause, jokes for agreement rather than laughter – in a deadening anti-Trump feedback loop. With the exception of The Daily Show, a cable program founded for the purpose of political satire, the shows basically serve two functions in the internet era: 1 Generate viral celebrity content as they promote another project, and 2 Comment freely on the news, unbound from the strictures of decorum, tone and supposed “objectivity” that hamstrings so much journalism in the US.The latter was, I’d argue, the most important contribution of late-night television in the Trump era, when the president and his minions exceeded parody, and Colbert was the best at it. Nimble, erudite, self-deprecating but exceptionally well-read, Colbert transformed from extremely successful Fox News satirist to the reverend father of late-night TV: principled, authoritative but hardly ever self-righteous, deeply faithful to the American project, steadfastly believing in the decency of others. (Colbert is a practicing Catholic and die-hard Lord of the Rings fan, facts that sometimes snuck into his monologues.) At times, such old-school values felt insufficient for the moment; the format of late-night comedy as a whole has proven futile, even pathetic, in the face of Donald Trump’s brand of shamelessness, the Maga movement’s ability to turn everything into a joke. But these hosts, and the Daily Show-trained Colbert especially, did something that the rest of news media or the sprawling celebrity and comedian podcast network could not: call bullshit on the administration with the imprimatur of a major television network, and say exactly what they were feeling.That ability proved useful to me, as a viewer, at times when it seemed standard media was incapable of articulating what was happening. During the pandemic, or the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, or on January 6, or when Trump was re-elected, or when Republicans mocked Californians during the devastating LA wildfires earlier this year, late-night television had the freedom to express outrage, and Colbert in particular to express moral injury. The jokes were almost never surprising; they weren’t really even jokes. But it still felt soothing to see someone say them, with corporate backing, at an institution that still carried enough name recognition to, well, merit a “late-night roundup”.Colbert, ultimately, will be fine. He is a skilled comedian whose talents weren’t always well-tapped by the strict format of late-night comedy. Perhaps he will join the legion of comedians with podcasts, speaking directly to fans; perhaps he will release a special. But his absence from late-night television spells doom for the rest of the format, and more importantly for freedom of speech on the big networks. Late-night comedy has been fighting a losing battle for a long time, and The Late Show was never going to out-influence the rising tide of rightwing media, the manosphere or any number of independent shows in a fracturing media landscape. But the fact that he could try, from one of the more famed perches in television, still meant something. More

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      Democrats condemn CBS for axing Colbert show: ‘People deserve to know if this is politically motivated’

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      Democrats are condemning CBS for its recent decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes just a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump.Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”In early July, Paramount settled a “frivolous” lawsuit with Trump over the president’s claim that CBS News deceptively edited an interview with then presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Paramount is also seeking approval from the US Federal Communications Commission for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media. On Monday, Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”.Colbert’s firing would not be the first potentially spurred by a dispute with the president. In February, after MSNBC fired host Joy Reid, Trump celebrated her show’s cancellation. Reid, a Black woman, had been a vocal critic of Trump and spoke frankly about the Black Lives Matter movement and war in Gaza. And in December, ABC News agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos with a $15m payment to a Trump foundation and museum, as well as paying $1m in the president’s legal fees.The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called for an investigation into Paramount’s relationship with Trump over the Skydance merger, wrote: “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount.”Skydance is owned by David Ellison, the son of a close Trump ally, Larry Ellison.Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington also posted on social media, writing: “People deserve to know if this is a politically motivated attack on free speech.”Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, echoed similar concerns. “CBS’s billionaire owners pay Trump $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit while trying to sell the network to Skydance,” he wrote. “Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late night host, slams the deal. Days later, he’s fired. Do I think this is a coincidence? NO.”CBS announced it would retire the Late Show after Colbert’s contract ends in May, cutting short a 33-year run that began when David Letterman launched the show in 1993. The show received an Emmy nomination earlier in the week for talk series.A number of celebrities also voiced their frustration with the cancellation, including concerns that it may have been politically motivated. In a social media post the actor John Cusack wrote: “He’s not groveling enough to American fascism – Larry Ellison needs his tax cuts – doesn’t need comedians reminding people they are not cattle.”In a joint statement, Paramount and CBS executives wrote that the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night”.They said they considered “Stephen Colbert irreplaceable” and that the show’s cancellation “is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount”.Writing on his own social media platform, Trump celebrated the show’s cancellation: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”Trump has called for the network to fire Colbert since September 2024, when the host called the president “boring” during an interview with PBS NewsHour. More

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      Stephen Colbert on Trump’s Epstein controversy: ‘Desperately looking for a scapegoat’

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      Late-night hosts dig into Donald Trump’s growing anxiety over the Jeffrey Epstein files and his beef with the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell.Stephen ColbertOn Thursday evening, Stephen Colbert announced that the Late Show would end in May 2026, owing to a decision by the CBS parent company, Paramount. Though Paramount said the decision was “purely financial”, the cancellation comes just three days after Colbert openly criticized the company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump for $16m.The settlement coincided with Paramount seeking approval from the Trump administration for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media. Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”.In a separate message to viewers on Thursday, Colbert said he was informed of the decision the night before. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he said as the audience booed.“It’s not just the end of the show, it is the end of the Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced, this is all just going away,” he added. “Let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish someone else was getting it. And it is a job I am looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months.”During his monologue, Colbert focused on the Jeffrey Epstein controversy consuming the White House, and “causing so much trouble for Trump that he recently ordered it to be put in a cell and for the cameras to stop working for three minutes”.“Maga is furious because they think Trump is refusing to release the Epstein files,” he explained. “In response, Trump has been saying that there are no credible files, and if there are, they’re really boring, and also Obama made them up.“That part is true, and you can read them on Obama’s annual summer Epstein client list,” he joked.“As crazy as it is, Trump is going all in on the idea that his followers have fallen for a nefarious Democratic scheme.” As Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday: “Certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats, and they’re following the Democrat playbook.”“That is ridiculous – the Democrats have never had a playbook,” Colbert joked. “It’s improv, baby!“Trump is desperately looking for a scapegoat,” so on Wednesday, he fired the Manhattan prosecutor who handled the Epstein case and “pulled the Uno reverse card”, calling on the FBI to investigate “this Jeffrey Epstein hoax”.“By which he evidently means he wants the FBI to investigate the folks who investigated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Colbert said, “which is weird, but we could get a whole new spinoff of To Catch a Predator.”Seth MeyersTrump “is under a lot of pressure from all this Epstein stuff. Even his most devoted supporters are trashing him and demanding answers,” said Seth Meyers on Thursday’s Late Night before clips of numerous Republicans demanding answers and even calling for an independent special counsel.In an interview with a far-right media network, Trump called the Epstein files a “scam” that’s “all put out by Democrats, some of the naive Republicans fall right into line like they always do”.“Fall in line with what?” an exasperated Meyers asked. “Democrats didn’t say a word. Your own supporters are the ones who spent years demanding the files and obsessing over the Epstein case, which was a very real criminal case involving a very real person, and now you’re the one fanning the flames of the conspiracy by calling it all a hoax. I swear we’re like a day away from Trump claiming Jeffrey Epstein was never even a real person.”Meyers also homed in on the far-right interviewer who validated Trump with “they definitely set the Republicans up.”“Set them up how?!” he implored. “We’ve been asking this question all week: how did they set up the Republicans? They made up fake Epstein files, then kept those fake files secret, then convinced the entire Maga base to spend years demanding the release of those files, then knew they would lose the election to Trump, who would then refuse to release the files they made up? You people all need to take a fucking dementia test.”The Daily Show“We all know President Trump has spent the last two weeks in a wrestling match with the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein,” said Jordan Klepper on the Daily Show. “But he’s been fighting the last six months with a much more alive person: Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. And boy does Trump hate the guy.”Klepper played a series of clips in which Trump called Powell a “stupid person”, an “average, mentally, person. I’d say low at what he does” and a “numbskull … you talk to the guy and it’s like talking to nothing. It’s like talking to a chair.”“Yeah! Whatever happened to all of our exciting, dynamic Federal Reserve chairs?” Klepper joked.“The way Trump talks about him, you’d think they caught him at a Coldplay concert with Trump’s wife,” he added. “But at its heart, this is a beef about economics. Trump wants to lower interest rates to help juice the economy, but Jerome Powell is in charge of setting those interest rates, and he refuses to lower them because he’s worried that will increase inflation. And nothing, nothing makes Trump angrier than someone doing their job well.”In another clip, Trump blasted Joe Biden for nominating Powell. Except … Klepper cut to a clip of Trump nominating Powell in 2017, calling him “strong,” “committed” and “smart”.“Damn, Joe Biden looks fat as shit,” Klepper joked. “But also, I get it. I’m also trying desperately to forget everything that happened during Trump’s first term.” More

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      The end of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is a concerning nail in the coffin for comedy | Jesse Hassenger

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      The idea that the political career of Donald Trump would be a goldmine for comedy died a long time ago, with the coffin accepting stray nails for the past five years. The latest and possibly last such nail is the cancellation of The Late Show, the CBS late-night talkshow hosted by Stephen Colbert since the fall of 2015, and originated by David Letterman when the network poached him from NBC in 1993. At this point, Trump hasn’t just made topical late-night comedy look outdated, hackneyed and an insufficient response to his reign of terror; he’s also made a chunk of it flat-out go away.There will be time to eulogize Colbert’s particular talkshow style later; the Late Show isn’t leaving the air for another 10 months, when his contract is up. Surely that leaves plenty more time to savage the president – and Colbert has been in this slot since right around the time Trump became a real contender in the presidential race, so why has this only now come to a head? Seemingly because the axing of the Late Show franchise follows the $16m settlement of a frivolous Trump lawsuit against CBS and their newsmagazine show 60 Minutes over the show’s editing of a 2024 interview with presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Colbert made great fun of his bosses’ payout as a cowardly “bribe” designed to appease the Trump administration, who are in the position to approve or deny the sale of Paramount, the corporate owners of CBS, to the company Skydance. In other words, the pre-merger nixing a comedian who regularly goofs on Trump on network TV seems like a convenient bit of timing – maybe even an unspoken bonus to go along with those millions of dollars.The network, of course, has characterized the decision as “purely financial” amid a period when most traditional late-night shows have struggled. As excuses go, it’s not entirely unconvincing. After all, Colbert isn’t being replaced with another host; The Late Show is simply going the same route as its short-lived companion series After Midnight (and The Late Late Show before it). CBS is surrendering the late-night block entirely. This represents a major retreat after the Letterman deal made the network a genuine player for the first time in ages. Presumably it’s back to reruns and old movies going forward.In that sense, this decision does transcend politics. CBS has ripped off a bandage that the big three networks have been applying to similar wounds for years. Late-night programming simply doesn’t mean as much as it used to, with smaller network lead-ins from primetime lineups and more audience choices for comedy, talk, music or even the dopey celeb games that Jimmy Fallon throws together. Saturday Night Live has retained some cultural cachet, thanks to a combination of lower commitment (20 episodes a year, on a night where many people don’t have work the next day, versus eight times as many, all airing on weeknights), legacy branding (it’s still known as a star showcase and political comedy go-to, no matter how wan those cold-open sketches get), and sketch comedy that travels well online. These days, it’s routinely one of the highest-rated network shows of the week when it airs a new episode, offering an encouraging sign that old time-slot rules about viewership no longer apply. It’s also extremely expensive to produce and difficult to replicate, which nonetheless looks more viable than the tired talkshow format.View image in fullscreenBroadly, this could be a good thing for comic minds including Colbert or Conan O’Brien. Some comedians seem unable to resist the siren call of late-night talkshows, chasing the Tonight Show dream even when that actual job remained out of reach. O’Brien is a singularly brilliant comedy writer and performer; as great as his late-night shows could be, in retrospect should he have spent three decades primarily in that waning medium? Colbert, meanwhile, did his strongest political satire playing a parody of a conservative commentator on The Daily Show and its later spinoff The Colbert Report. His warmth and sometimes-sharp humor made him a good “real” talkshow host – and by most standards, a successful one. In recent matchups, his Late Show has been the most-watched such program across the major networks. That he can face cancellation anyway should (alongside O’Brien losing his Tonight Show gig years ago) signal to newcomers that the rarified air of the national late-night talkshow host is also getting pretty thin, maybe unbreathable.Yet Trump has sucked up some of that oxygen, too. Even with the “challenges” cited by CBS, it’s difficult to believe that vanquishing a longtime issuer of Trump mockery wasn’t at least considered a side benefit of canceling The Late Show. Even if the decision was, as claimed, a financial one, it accompanies another financial decision: that Paramount could afford to pay Trump $16m rather than proceed with litigation that many seemed to think they could win. That’s precisely the kind of expense that could diminish how, say, your late-night talkshow attracts more eyeballs than The Tonight Show.Beyond Trump personally smudging up the balance sheets, he’s helped to hasten the demise of late-night comedy simply by being himself, seeming to provide the perfect target: a venal, dimwitted perma-celebrity with an army of devoted sycophants. But after two non-consecutive administrations have flooded the zone with grotesqueries, performing a lightly zinging monologue or sketches as a warmup act for good-natured interviews seems unlikely to entice either those craving anti-Trump catharsis, or those desperate to believe in his strongman powers.That Colbert took a somewhat less cutesy approach than his competitor Fallon seemed to be all that was necessary to mark him as a troublemaker. The thing is, Trump might have ultimately consumed him either way. By providing a ready-made caricature of himself, intentionally or not, the president has beaten the system again. It may not be worth mourning the hacky, presidential-themed jokes we might miss in a future with fewer talkshows than ever. But it does feel like the enforcement of one of Trump’s more minor cruelties: the ability to see himself as the only real star in the world. More

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      Seth Meyers on Trump’s falling approval rating: ‘Worth remembering that people don’t like this’

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      Late-night hosts spoke about how Donald Trump’s presidency is proving unpopular with Americans, looking at the cruelty of his deportation strategy and the response to protests in Los Angeles.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about Trump’s approval rating going down this past week and in particular he looked at how people are against his extreme immigration strategy.“People don’t even approve of Trump on immigration and that’s what people wanted him for,” he said.Meyers called his tactics “needlessly cruel” before speaking about his appearance at the Kennedy Center this week where he went to see a performance of Les Misérables.Trump was booed by many and Meyers said it was “like Darth Vader getting booed on the Death Star”.He said it was “worth remembering that people don’t like this stuff” and that while Trump might have promised to crack down on criminality, instead he has been “letting Stephen Miller run rampant” targeting everyday workers.Meyers called it a “wildly unpopular crackdown on innocent people living their lives” and Trump now trying to control the narrative showed how he is “terrified” of losing more support.Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert said that there was a possibility that thunderstorms might force Trump to cancel the military parade planned for the weekend.“You made God mad and now he’s shooting lightning at your birthday tanks,” Colbert joked.He added: “If he gets too wet, it all slides off and someone has to carry his face and his hair around in a bucket.”It’s proving to be an unpopular plan already with six in 10 Americans calling it a bad use of government money. “He’s already throwing a big military parade out in Los Angeles,” Colbert added.This weekend will also see planned pushback across the US dubbed the “No Kings” protests. Trump was asked if he saw himself as a king this week and he claimed that was not how he saw himself. “Why dost thou sons look so inbred?” Colbert quipped.He also spoke about Trump’s unpopular visit to the theatre and joked about his dumb responses to questions on the red carpet. “His brain is wet bread,” he said before joking that Trump probably believes Les Misérables is about a character called “Lester Misérables”.Trump has raged against drag performances at the Kennedy Center so some decked-out drag queens walked in to watch the show near Trump. “That is amazing except for anyone sitting behind them,” he said.Colbert also looked at the coverage of the Los Angeles protests, ridiculing a CNN segment that commented on the smell of weed during a peaceful demonstration. “They better call a Swat team and a taco truck,” he said.This week also saw the Trump administration target the use of any “improper ideology” at the National zoo. “All monkeys doing it in front of our preschoolers must be married,” Colbert said.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host joked about surviving the “post-apocalyptic hellscape” that is Los Angeles.He also brought up the “Maga-friendly” Kennedy Center and how Trump going to see Les Misérables was “like Kanye going to see Fiddler on the Roof”.He added: “Usually when Trump watches a staged rebellion, it’s Fox News’s coverage of the riots here in LA.”Kimmel joked that Trump was “putting out fires with his brain” given how calm things have really been in the city, and compared it with the January 6 riot where Trump and his followers called those involved “concerned citizens on a sightseeing tour”.He spoke about the the planned protests this weekend, saying: “I really hope that doesn’t put a damper on Trump’s big birthday parade.”This week also saw Trump admit in an interview to once playing the flute when he was younger. “I feel like I’d have the same reaction to a gorilla using a curling iron,” Kimmel said.In other news, Rand Paul’s refusal to support Trump’s bill that would increase the national debt also saw him disinvited from this year’s White House picnic, but after he told reporters, Trump claimed this wasn’t the case. “Trump thought RuPaul was trying to get in,” he joked. More

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      Jon Stewart on CNN’s Biden book: ‘Selling you a book about news they should have told you’

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      Late-night hosts rip CNN for promoting a book on Joe Biden’s health and weigh in on Donald Trump attacking Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen.Jon StewartOn the Daily Show, Jon Stewart tore into CNN anchor Jake Tapper for promoting his book Original Sin, written with Alex Thompson, on his network. The host played several clips of Tapper teasing the book, which reports on Biden’s mental decline while still in the White House. In the final clip, Tapper says: “You will not believe what we found out.”“Don’t news people have to tell you what they know when they find it out?” Stewart wondered on Monday evening. “Isn’t that the difference between news and a secret? ‘You won’t believe what we found out’ – no, that’s why I watch breaking news.”Stewart noted real breaking news on Sunday, which was confirmation from Biden’s personal team that he was diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer and was considering treatment options. “Doing the story seems almost disrespectful,” said Stewart. “Can CNN thread the needle? How do you pivot from excitedly promoting your anchor’s book to somberly and respectfully promoting your anchor’s book?”Well, as one CNN staffer put it: “This was already going to be a tough week, and this makes it much harder. And that is a reference to the fact that our colleagues, Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson have a book that’s set to be published on Tuesday.”“It’s so hard, it’s such a difficult time, so unfathomable in terms of the pain his family must be feeling,” Stewart mocked. “And yet, if you act now, you use the code ‘backslash tap that book’, it’s 20% off.”Jokes aside, Stewart acknowledged: “How fucking weird it is that the news is selling you a book about news they should have told you was news a year ago, for free.”“I understand the excitement over an insidious Democratic cover-up about Joe Biden’s mental decline,” he added. “The thing is though, it was a terrible cover-up, because we all fucking knew.”“There was no cover-up – poll after poll showed vast majorities of the public thought Biden was too old and too out of it to run again,” he continued. “Dean Phillips mounted an entire primary campaign because of it.”“He along with most of the public knew it was a bad idea for Biden to run. We knew it,” Stewart concluded. “And that’s what’s so hilarious about politicians. The cover-up doesn’t work when everyone knows you’re lying.”Stephen ColbertMeanwhile, Trump spent the weekend “settling back into the White House after his Mideast all-you-can-bribe buffet”, as Stephen Colbert put it on Monday’s Late Show.“He just loved it over there!” he continued. “He was having such a good time with the princes and the palaces and the marble and the gold, and the special souvenir he really wants to bring home: obedience to leaders on punishment of death.”Trump “spent this beautiful weekend viciously attacking anyone who dare defy him”, including Walmart, which recently said his tariffs were “too high” and would force the chain to raise prices. “Which means it’s going to cost you a lot more when you run out for milk, one Goodyear tire and a t-shirt that says ‘Shrek yourself before you wreck yourself,’” Colbert joked.Evidently, Trump did not like Walmart “accurately describing how he has personally affected your pocketbook”, so he posted on Truth Social: “Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain … they should as is said, ‘EAT THE TARIFFS’”Colbert broke out his Trump impression: “As is said, I make a mess, you eat it. That’s how the world works. Which reminds me – JD, there’s some hot dog stuck in my golf cleats. Get over here with your tongue and a positive attitude.”Walmart wasn’t Trump’s only target on social media this weekend. On Friday, out of nowhere, he posted: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’”“First of all, sir, keep my best friend Taylor Swift’s name out of your filthy nugget hole,” said Colbert. “Second, it’s possible people are talking about her a little less these days because her 149-date Eras Tour ended six months ago.”But attacking Swift was “just a warm-up”, because he also went after Bruce Springsteen, after the musician called him “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” at a concert in Manchester, England.In a rambling Truth Social post, Trump called Springsteen “highly overrated”, said he “never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics” and claimed “he is not a talented guy”.“What are you doing? Attacking Bruce is like attacking America itself!” Colbert marveled.Trump went on: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country.”“Pretty bold to say someone else’s skin is atrophied when your own complexion can best be described as Tandoori Catcher’s Mitt,” Colbert quipped. More