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    Seth Meyers: ‘Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care’

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    Late-night hosts discussed Donald Trump’s out-of-touch comments on grocery prices, the longest-ever government shutdown and a dramatic White House press conference on Ozempic.Seth MeyersSeth Meyers continued to analyze the results of Tuesday’s elections on Thursday evening, examining what fueled major victories for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey. “If you do look inside the numbers, you’ll see that it wasn’t just anti-Trump backlash that fueled Democrats’ wins,” the Late Night host said. “Voters are also furious about the economy,” especially record-high grocery prices.“So the same thing that we were told was an issue in the last election was still an issue in this election because nothing has been fixed,” Meyers continued. “And voters are right – grocery prices are going up, everything from coffee to bananas to beef.” In fact, beef prices have never been higher. “Soon it’s going to get so bad that Trump’s going to start pushing Americans toward vegan options,” Meyers joked.But “don’t worry, Republicans, Trump is in touch with the common man,” he added. “That’s his gift. He knows what it’s like to go to the grocery store and feel the pain when you open your wallet and hand the cashier your ID and – wait, what?”Speaking from the White House, Trump claimed that “all we want is voter ID” at the grocery store. “You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID.”“Yeah, everyone knows you get carded at the grocery store,” Meyers deadpanned. “Trump has no idea what regular people are going through and he doesn’t care.”In fact, Trump insisted that grocery prices were going down in his recent interview with CBS News’s 60 Minutes. “You can lie about immigration, you can lie about the stock market, you can even lie about what wars you ended because most Americans will say ‘I didn’t even know that Thailand and Finland were at war,’” said Meyers. “But you can’t lie about the prices people see with their own eyes at the grocery store.”Stephen ColbertOn the Late Show, Stephen Colbert checked in on the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 38 days. “The shutdown has already wreaked havoc on air travel, and that havoc is about to get even reekier,” he said, as air traffic controllers aren’t being paid and many aren’t showing up to work.So many, in fact, that the Federal Aviation Administration has directed airlines to cut 10% of their flights at the busiest airports. “So unfortunately it may be time to try your new favorite airline: the bus,” Colbert joked. “If you’re traveling for Thanksgiving, you might want to leave now.”Colbert also touched on the major victories for Democrats on election day, which Trump referred to in a press conference as “an interesting evening and we learned a lot”.“That sounds like what you’d say after a Tinder date where someone had to go to the hospital,” Colbert laughed.In other news, Fifa – “whose job, you’ll recall, is to take bribes and regulate soccer”, Colbert joked – announced a new peace prize to be awarded at the World Cup draw in Washington. “Yes, the Fifa peace prize: it’s given exclusively to world leaders who stop wars using only their feet,” Colbert said.“So it really looks like a made-up award just to give Trump something,” he noted, though when asked to confirm that Trump would be given the award, Fifa president Gianni Infantino demurred, saying: “On the 5th of December, you will see.”“Man, it is going to be hilarious when they give it to Obama,” Colbert laughed.The Daily ShowAnd on the Daily Show, Jordan Klepper recapped a dramatic White House press conference in which Trump announced a plan to cut the price of Ozempic and other pharmaceutical weight-loss drugs. “It’s all part of his campaign promise and his one consistent principle of ‘no fatties’,” Klepper joked.The press conference was “an event that turned into a major Hipaa violation”, as Trump announced the price cuts by singling out members of his administration who did or did not take weight-loss drugs.“Joking aside, obesity is a serious issue,” Klepper said. “So, this could be a benefit. Dr Oz, you’re a doctor, theoretically. Give us a reasonable expectation of success here.”Oz, the TV doctor turned Trump’s administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, boasted that Americans would “lose 135bn pounds by the midterms”.“Why the midterms?” Klepper wondered. “Did they add a swimsuit competition to those?“Look, I’m no mathematician,” he continued. “But 135bn pounds divided by 340 million Americans means we each have to lose … 400lb by the midterms. And I know that sounds like a lot, but remember: that’s just the average! Some people will lose 300lb, while other people will lose 500lb. Some of us will lose no pounds at all, which will be offset by everyone losing 800lb.“The point is, regardless of how much you lose, Donald Trump will be tracking it and announcing your personal results at a press conference.” More

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      Seth Meyers on Mamdani’s win: ‘The kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Democrats’ slate of wins across the country and Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City mayoral race.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers celebrated Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York mayoral race, becoming the first south Asian and Muslim mayor of the biggest city in the US, as well as New York’s first mayoral candidate since 1969 to receive more than a million votes.“This is the kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years,” said an enthusiastic Meyers. “I haven’t seen a crowd of New Yorkers this excited since the time the real Timotheé Chalamet stopped at a Timotheé Chalamet lookalike contest in Manhattan.“And if you thought Trump was bummed about the results before Mamdani’s speech, he probably felt even worse” when he heard Mamdani say: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!”“OK, first of all, you do not need to tell him to turn the volume up,” Meyers joked. “He’s a 79-year-old Fox News addict, you know the volume is maxed out.“Mamdani correctly calculated that standing up to Trump was a better political strategy than whatever this is,” he continued, cutting to a clip of the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – a New York establishment Democrat who did not endorse Mamdani – droning on about “Kentucky fried french fries” at a press conference.Asked who he voted for, Schumer declined to specify, instead saying: “Look, I voted, and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”“You’re the Democratic leader, and you won’t even say you voted for the Democratic nominee?” Meyers fumed. “Why are you treating it like a secret?“Things happen here, and they happen fast,” he said in a final ode to New York. “How fast? A dude who was polling at 1% a year ago was just elected mayor, and that’s what makes New York City great. And if you can’t hear the resounding message voters sent last night, then maybe you should” – to quote Mamdani – “turn the volume up.”Stephen Colbert“I don’t know about you guys, but tonight my heart is full of something I have not felt in almost a year, and that is … good?” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, his first since Democrats swept races across the country, offering a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration.“Today Democrats are walking around with a spring in their step like a divorced mom in her 40s whose new haircut just got her carded at two different bars,” he joked.Colbert also celebrated Mamdani’s win in New York. The 34-year-old state assemblyman “didn’t just defeat Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, he nut-punched New York’s fattest cats”, he said. “The billionaires had the knives out for Zohran, pumping massive amounts of cash into anti-Mamdani groups. I’m talking big-roll high-rollers,” including the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, son of Estée, who donated $2.6m to stop him; hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, who spent $1.75m on anti-Mamdani campaigns; and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who spent $2m.“So it’s a bad day for billionaires,” said Colbert. “Or as it’s also known, still a pretty good day! They’re still billionaires.”Speaking to supporters after clinching the victory, Mamdani offered a different political vision than the federal government in Washington. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he said.“And as always, the port authority will be the smell,” Colbert added.Jimmy KimmelAnd in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel cheered on the Democrats’ many wins on Tuesday. “We needed a big night,” he said. “Democrats have had fewer wins this year than the Jets.“This was not a good night for the president,” he continued. “Everything he touched was a loser. Trump hasn’t been this embarrassed since there was a Donald Trump Jr.”“But if you’re tired of all the losing, fear not! He’s got an excuse,” Kimmel said. “In fact, he’s got two of them.” Trump wrote on Truth Social: “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. AND SHUTDOWN. WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”“Now, if Republicans had won and he wasn’t on the ballot, would he take credit for that?” Kimmel responded. “Oh yes, he definitely would.”Trump then posted “… AND SO IT BEGINS!” – “which was either a response to Mamdani winning the mayoral race, or he just sat down on the toilet, I don’t know,” said Kimmel. “I mean, seriously, what is that supposed to mean? What would motivate him to post ‘and so it begins’ at almost midnight?”Kimmel then pivoted to the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 37 days. “Trump has been desperately trying to convince anyone who will listen that Democrats are responsible for the shutdown and that it has nothing to do with him trying to hide the Epstein files,” he said. “The gaslighting has reached a fever pitch, as Trump cuts off the supply of food to children, families, senior citizens, etc.”But, Kimmel said, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “wants you to know: just because they’re cutting off your food and want to cut off your health insurance, that doesn’t mean they don’t care”.As Johnson told reporters: “Every hardworking American in any place that’s missed a paycheck, anyone who has been made to suffer … anyone who is hurting, you have a home in the Republican party.”“Yes, you have a home in the Republican party!” Kimmel scoffed. “You’ll be living under the stairs like Harry Potter and you’re not allowed in the fridge, but you do have a home.” More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene tells Bill Maher she believes extraterrestrials are demons

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      Republican US House member Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she believes in demons, surmising that they might be aliens who fell from heaven, and claims to have been unaware that key figures in the antisemitic space lasers conspiracy she floated were Jewish.She made those bizarre remarks as a guest on Friday on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher after winning some fans among Democrats who once loathed her – yet had come to appreciate how the far-right Georgia representative had recently broken with Republicans on various issues. Those include healthcare, Gaza, the federal government shutdown that began on 1 October and the handling of documents pertaining to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was friends with Donald Trump before the latter man won two presidencies.Greene’s appearance on Maher’s show perhaps made evident the ideological distance between the congresswoman – who has conspicuously avoided directly criticizing Trump himself – and some of her newer, cross-aisle admirers.Maher on Friday asked another of his on-air guests, film-maker Dan Farah, to discuss his new documentary, The Age of Disclosure, and how it explores the way some senior US military officials apparently theorize earnestly that “demons” may be responsible for what some colloquially refer to as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.The Real Time host, who is generally considered to be left-leaning, subsequently asked those on the show: “Do you think demons and the devil are real?”Greene, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, confidently answered: “Absolutely. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. And I believe those could be fallen angels.”As Maher replied: “Fallen angels? The aliens are fallen angels?” Greene continued: “That’s possible – I think that’s what they could be. That’s what makes sense in my worldview.”The Fifth Column podcast host Michael Moynihan was also participating in the discussion, and Maher called on him to say whether he agreed with Greene. “No,” Moynihan said. “I’m sorry.”At another point in the show, Maher invited Greene to revisit her infamous 2018 social media screed positing that wildfires that had devastated California were ignited by a laser beam from space under the control of the Rothschild banking dynasty.The progressive watchdog Media Matters uncovered that post weeks into Greene’s first congressional term. And her colleagues at the time voted to remove her from her House committee assignments, with the Rothschild family having repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic conspiracy theories.Greene on Friday declared to Maher that she initially “didn’t even know the Rothschilds were Jewish”.“Before politics … I [did] not know much of any of this stuff,” Greene said. “I never even said the word ‘Jewish’ in the … post.”Maher pointed out that “‘Rothschild’, to a lot of people, is almost synonymous with the word ‘Jewish’”.Greene replied: “I had no idea … Now I know it’s Jewish.”Amid laughter and applause, Maher retorted: “Right. Well, now we know … That’s what I’m here for – to make sure that people in Congress know what the fuck you’re talking about.” More

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      A South Park Halloween: latest episode destroys Trump over White House demolition

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      The second episode of South Park’s abrupt 28th season was meant to air this past Wednesday (the immediately preceding season 27 was just five episodes) but ended up being pushed back to Friday. This worked in the show’s favor, since tonight’s installment, titled The Woman in the Hat, is very much a Halloween special.After shuttering Tegridy Farms, the Marsh family find themselves rudderless, living out of motels while patriarch Randy looks for work (thanks to the federal government shutdown, he can’t go back to his former job as a government geologist). Out of desperation, Randy moves his family into the old folks’ home where he’s stashed his elderly father.This leads a bitter Stan Marsh to lament that “South Park sucks now … and it’s because of this political shit”. Reminiscing about simpler times when the boys used to do things together, he teams up with best friends Kyle and Kenny, as well as Kyle’s uber-stereotypical relative from New York, Cousin Kyle, to launch a new meme coin. Cousin Kyle works his “savvy Jew-jitsu” to “screw a lot of people out of their money”.Meanwhile, in Washington DC, President Trump oversees the destruction of the White House’s East Wing. Although he’s promised his lover Satan that the remodeling is for a new nursery for their forthcoming love child, he fully intends to build yet another party space for himself. Trump’s plans get derailed when he receives word from his inner circle – including a brown-nosed Pam Bondi (her face covered in literal feces, or “rectoplasm”) and a ghoulish Stephen Miller – that unknown forces are conspiring to kill his and Satan’s baby. Despite attempting to force an abortion himself, an already paranoid Trump is freaked out by the news, and he finds himself haunted by the ghostly specter of wife Melania, appearing as a ghostly figure from out of a J-horror film, a la The Ring or The Grudge.(The true murderous mastermind behind everything, JD Vance, continues to plot with co-conspirator Peter Thiel, who is keeping a demonically possessed Eric Cartman on ice.)These disparate threads converge when Cousin Kyle seeks out White House approval for the boys’ crypto dump, only to find himself part of an impromptu seance alongside Trump, Bondi, Miller, Vance, Don Jr, Kristi Noem and FCC head Brendan Carr (still suffering from injuries sustained a few episodes back). A ghostly wrath descends upon the party and threatens to expose both Trump’s Epstein ties and Vance’s power grab until Cousin Kyle, ravaged by guilt, admits that “crypto’s just a money-laundering scheme for the rich to get richer!” Cut to a screeching Fox News alert announcing that Bondi – her entire face still covered in feces – has indicted Cousin Kyle for crypto fraud. He gets sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Bondi vows to “indict anyone who says bad stuff about our amazing president”.Back home, a defeated Stan realizes that “there’s just no really going back to the way things used to be”. Kyle attempts to console him, promising that things will return to normal at some point down the line, but the dark, Shining-esque note that the episode closes on casts doubt on this.Another solid building block in what, when all is said and done, promises to be South Park’s most ambitious season (or two seasons) yet. While the show has always tackled current events, its never folded them into its long-term storytelling in such a way.At the same time, series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker clearly recognize that the fervency of these latest seasons’ political satire is alienating some of their longtime fans, who likely feel that the show has gone too far in this direction. The self-satirizing within this episode may not placate those critics, but it puts Stone and Parker’s perspective into sharp relief: as the world has changed, so too has South Park. Per voice-of-reason Kyle, there’s no point in trying to go back to simpler times – all anyone can do is “make the most of where we are”. More

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      Jon Stewart on Trump’s taunts of an illegal third term: ‘We know he’s thought about it’

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      Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s taunts about an illegal third presidential term and his demolition of the East Wing of the White House.Jon StewartFrom his Monday night post on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart assessed the threat of Trump attempting to run for a third term as president, which is illegal under the 22nd amendment to the constitution.Asked by reporters for his thoughts on comments by Steve Bannon that he had a plan for such a campaign, Trump answered: “I would love to do it … I have my best numbers ever.”He also claimed, however: “I haven’t really thought about it.”“That’s the tell for whenever he’s asked about something that he is definitely going to do that is dubious legally, ethically or morally,” Stewart noted. “He says he hasn’t thought about it. But of course we know he’s thought about it because he already has the merch,” he added, pointing to “Trump 2028” hats that Trump has displayed in the Oval Office.“What’s interesting about Trump is he’s actually worked through the various scenarios of running for a third term that he has not thought about,” said Stewart, pointing to Trump’s further comments that “I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute.”“Too cute? No, that’s why you don’t go to Build-a-Bear as an adult,” Stewart replied. “Running as the vice-president to skirt the 22nd amendment isn’t cute. But he’s the kinda guy who’s like ‘I respect Americans too much to play games. If I’m going to run again, I’m going to rip off the constitution’s head and shit down its neck.’“Indications are very clear he’s gonna do it,” he continued, “because you don’t move into a house, knock down a wing and build a 90,000-sq-ft ballroom for the next guy.“Trump’s not a house-flipper,” he added. “He’s not Ellen. He’s in it for the long haul.”Jimmy KimmelJimmy Kimmel returned from a weeklong family trip to Ireland with renewed perspective on his home country. “In case you’re wondering what people in other countries think about what’s going on here in our country, I’ll tell you: they’re worried about us,” he said. “They’re very worried. They’re worried about us in the same way you worry about a nephew who you maybe haven’t seen for a few years and he shows up at Thanksgiving missing all of his front teeth? That kind of worry.”People in Ireland, Kimmel reported, had a lot of questions for him about Trump, including: “Why is he knocking down part of the White House?”“I don’t know. Nobody knows,” he answered. “I don’t think he even knows.“Back here at home, the unrest continues to rage out of control. Antifa terrorists are destroying government – oh wait, that’s the White House,” Kimmel joked over a photo of the demolished East Wing. “That’s what Trump did on purpose, without permission, to the White House. I told you we should’ve made him put down a security deposit!”Nevertheless, Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, defended the move on NBC News: “I think this was a judgment call by the president. The president is a master builder. I don’t know, I assume that maybe parts of the East Wing, there could’ve been asbestos, there could’ve been mold.“There could’ve been some old Chinese food, could’ve been ghosts! We don’t know,” Kimmel joked. “All we know is that the only solution was to completely smash the whole place down. I wish the master builder would master-build in private like the rest of us do.”Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers also touched on the Trump 2028 hats seen on his desk during meetings with congressional Democrats.“It’s so weird to make a hat for a thing that can’t happen,” said Meyers. “Wearing a Trump 2028 hat is like wearing a hat that says Super Bowl champion New York Jets.”“So Trump put some hats on the desk during a meeting with Democrats,” he continued, “and the Democrats in attendance definitely thought it was weird.”As the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, told CNN: “it was the strangest thing ever.”“Come on, the strangest thing ever? Don’t you live Brooklyn?” Meyers laughed. “If someone Rollerbladed into a Brooklyn deli wearing a full mermaid costume, the only thing anyone would say is ‘the usual, Jeff?’“It’s not even the strangest thing Trump has done,” he continued. “Not long before that meeting, he wandered on to the roof of the White House.“Think about how insane this is: this was supposed to be a meeting about keeping the government open, making sure troops get paid and families get nutrition assistance and air traffic controllers can do their jobs,” Meyers added. “And instead the president’s main interest was trolling.“Trump can’t help himself,” he concluded. “The Maga movement cares more about trolling libs than making government function, which is why he keeps going on about this unconstitutional third term.”Stephen Colbert“It was a beautiful day here in America because Donald Trump was out of the country,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. To start the week, Trump was on a “field trip” to Asia, where “he’s going to tear down the Great Wall and put up a ballroom,” Colbert quipped.The trip includes stops in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, where Trump danced to a marching band in a way that Colbert could only describe as “shuffling and swinging his wrists like a low-battery Chuck E Cheese robot”.In Japan, the new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, reportedly planned to gift Trump a gold golf ball. “It is so sad to see how easy it is to butter up the president of the United States,” Colbert remarked. “OK quick, Trump’s visiting, what are we going to get him this time? Gold burger? Gold TV? Have we tried spray-painting a woman gold?”Colbert also touched on the fourth week of the ongoing government shutdown. “The longer it goes, the more used to having no government we get and then the less likely it is to ever end,” he said.The shutdown is now restricting military pay. But on Friday, an anonymous donor – later identified as Timothy Mellon – gifted $130m to pay troops during the shutdown. “I know that sounds nice, I get it, but I don’t like the idea of the armed forces having a private sponsor,” Colbert said. “I don’t want our next invasion to be code-named ‘Operation Chili’s New El Diablo Triple Dipper Rib Tips: Can You Stand the Heat?’” More

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      in Elections

      Can You Identify the Literary Names and Titles Adopted by These TV Shows and Musicians?

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      Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge celebrates allusions to characters and plots from classic novels found in music and television. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books. More

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      in US Politics

      BBC reporters cannot wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts in newsroom, says Tim Davie

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      BBC journalists cannot wear T-shirts in the newsroom supporting the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter, the corporation’s director general has said.Tim Davie said the BBC stood against racism but it was “not appropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue to be campaigning in that way.“You cannot have any assumption about where people are politically. You leave it at the door, and your religion is journalism in the BBC. And I tell you: the problem I’ve got is people react quite chemically to that.“So you can’t come into the newsroom with a Black Lives Matter T-shirt on. We stand absolutely firmly against racism in any form.“I find some of the hatred in society at the moment utterly abhorrent, personally, really upsetting, but that is a campaign that has politicised objectives. Therefore, it is not appropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue to be campaigning in that way.“And, for some people joining the BBC, that is a very difficult thing to accept. And it has not been an easy thing to get done this, and we wrestle with it every day.”Speaking about diversity and impartiality at the BBC at the Cheltenham literature festival, Davie also drew a parallel with impartiality when reporting on mainstream political campaigning.“I feel very, very strongly that if you walk into the BBC newsroom, you cannot be holding a Kamala Harris mug when you come to the election – no way, that’s not even acceptable,” he said.The BBC director general also said his “number one priority” was “trying to navigate a course where you are impartial” and that required “elements of diversity”, adding that “socioeconomic diversity” was something that “hadn’t been talked about enough”.He added: “It is absolutely a big battle, and I’m getting questions: ‘Why are you giving a voice to Reform?’, ‘Why are you doing this?’ We’re not giving a voice, we’re covering – covering what people are interested in, covering the reality of what people feel.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDavie was also asked whether he felt safe when he had been shouted at and people had come into his personal space.He said: “It’s not for the faint-hearted; these jobs in public life now, I mean, they are really quite demanding. I’m no great Californian hippy, but you have to look after yourself, you really have to.” More

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      A rightwing late-night show may have bombed – but the funding behind it is no laughing matter

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      A group of conservative donors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a rightwing version of late-night talkshows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show, leaked documents reveal, in a further indication of the right’s ongoing efforts to overhaul American culture.News of the effort to pump conservative viewpoints into the mainstream comes as entertainment shows and the media at large are under severe threat in the US. In September, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was taken off the air, under pressure from the Trump administration, after Kimmel’s comments after the killing of Charlie Kirk, while Donald Trump has launched multiple lawsuits against TV networks and news organizations.Four pilot episodes, each of which has been watched by the Guardian, were made of the rightwing chatshow. It was promoted by the Ziklag group, a secretive Christian nationalist organization, which aims to reshape culture to match its version of Christianity. In an email in 2022, Ziklag – which ProPublica reported spent $12m to elect Trump last year – urged its members to stump up money for the project, called the Talk Show With Eric Metaxas.“For too long, the late-night talkers on network tv have filled the airwaves with progressive rants and outright mockery of anyone who espouses traditional American values,” the Ziklag email read.The Talk Show With Eric Metaxas, Ziklag wrote, will “change that forever”. The email said the show needed $400,000 to $500,000 to film five pilot episodes, “which will be presented to digital distributors, networks and tv ownership groups”.The Guardian sat through nearly four hours of the Talk Show, and found it to be an almost exact copy of existing late-night shows, just worse: with hack jokes about tired issues and has-been, conservative guests. The show was never picked up, presumably to the chagrin of Ziklag and its investors, who had lofty expectations.Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 video. Here is a link to the video instead.“Spoiler alert! The secular elites who currently reign over late-night tv are about to find out the joke’s on them!” Ziklag’s pitch email read. It lauded Metaxas, a conservative radio host and author who was an eager proponent of the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming: “His comedic bent has gone largely unnoticed until now that is…”Unfortunately, across the four pilots, Metaxas’s comedic bent was noticeable only by its absence.“Big news in the world of show business,” Metaxas began the first episode. “Harrison Ford will be returning for a fifth Indiana Jones movie. Yeah. In this one Harrison will find an ancient artifact … by looking in the mirror.”There were a few titters from the audience, and scattered applause. Metaxas, appearing nervous, continued with the one-liners:“Barbie’s longtime companion, Ken, just turned 61 years old. Yeah. And he said the perfect gift for his birthday would be to finally get a prostate.”This time there were some audible groans. Metaxas stuck at it.“In India, doctors removed 526 teeth from a seven-year-old boy’s mouth,” he chortled. “The boy is recovering nicely. However, the Tooth Fairy declared bankruptcy.”Ziklag claimed the show would welcome “guests who are routinely shadow banned on other talk shows”, and quoted Metaxas as saying: “It’s kind of like Stalin has air-brushed these people out of the culture.”But the common theme among the guests was that they had been naturally phased out of existing talkshows due to their irrelevance.The first episode featured an exclusive interview with Carrot Top, the 60-year-old prop comedian. Carrot Top showed Metaxas some of his props, including a bottle of Bud Light that had a torch in the bottom of it and a dinner plate that had a hole in it. Carrot Top managed to say absolutely nothing of interest during the three-minute tête-à-tête, before Metaxas cut back to the studio.“Tonight’s show is loaded with talent,” Metaxas announced to the live audience. The guests included a TikToker – “for our generation, Tic Tac was a breath mint”, Metaxas quipped – Tammy Pescatelli, a comedian who has been absent from the limelight for at least a decade; and Danny Bonaduce, best known for his work on the 1970s sitcom the Partridge Family.Throughout the episodes – as Metaxas sang a song with a terrified-looking Victoria Jackson, a self-described conservative Christian who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992 and has claimed Barack Obama is an “Islamic terrorist” – and as he continued with awful jokes about some scientists who had developed a robot that could build furniture but “cannot promise that the robot won’t swear”, it was hard to see what the point of this was.In its email, Ziklag said it was offering the opportunity to invest as part of the “Media Mountain”, a reference to the Seven Mountain Mandate, a theology popular among the Christian right. The theology proposes that Christians should seek to take over seven spheres of influence in public life: religion, the government, the media, education, culture, entertainment and business.Chris Himes, who produced the Talk Show, said the show was not intended to be a “rightwing late-night show”. The aim, Himes said, was “to create a broad, throwback late-night program for the entire country – not just one side”.“These are not partisan or ‘right-wing’ shows. Think Letterman or Dick Cavett in tone: humor first, with no space for snark or ‘clapter’,” he said in an email.“Sadly, much of late night over the past decade has shifted from being genuinely funny to becoming a vehicle for tribal signaling – even occasionally straying into messaging far beyond comedy. We believe the country deserves something better.”Himes added: “To be clear, a ‘right-wing’ late-night show would be a terrible idea. What we’re building is something more essential: a genuinely funny, unifying alternative.”In the pilot episodes, there were guests who were known for rightwing politics, but Metaxas largely didn’t ask them about those politics. In episode three, he seemed to decide he needed to at least say a bit of something to satisfy the rightwing donors funding this enterprise, but that came in the form of going over well-trodden ground about liberals.“Botanists have discovered a meat-eating plant in Canada,” Metaxas said in his intro. “Researchers determined that the plant started eating meat because it just got tired of explaining its vegan lifestyle.”He continued: “Detroit’s sanitation workers – I just read this – they’re threatening to go on strike. Detroit’s mayor said not to worry, because Detroit will continue to look and smell exactly the same.”Another quip ventured into current affairs: “Gas costs a fortune. It’s insane how much it costs. And who would have thought that the best deal at the Shell station would ever be the $3 microwave burrito?”Ziklag’s pitch to investors had promised big-name guests. It didn’t deliver apart from an interview – heavily touted by Metaxas – with film-maker Ron Howard. The interview turned out to be from a press junket, where directors or actors sit in a room for eight hours and basically anyone with a press pass can schedule time to question them.It’s unlikely Howard knew he was appearing on what Ziklag described as a “faith-friendly, late night alternative”, but that’s perhaps irrelevant, given networks clearly passed on what is a confused, drab copy of shows that are actually successful.But while Metaxas’s effort to shoehorn a conservative show into the mainstream may have been lamentable, the fact that wealthy rightwingers are attempting to do so should be cause for concern, given the threat television is under from Trump.Earlier this year, CBS scrapped the Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Colbert had repeatedly mocked Trump – weeks after CBS’s parent company settled a lawsuit with Trump. Trump has also called for late-night show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, who have both criticized the president, to be fired, while the president has overseen NPR and PBS being stripped of funding, having decried “biased media”.The Talk Show was a terrible product, memorable only for dreadful humor and snooze-inducing interviews. In the current climate, however, it serves as a reminder that the right wing is waging a well-funded war on the media that is unlikely to end soon. More

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      Test Yourself on Horror Novels That Were Adapted for the Screen

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. With Halloween on the horizon, this week’s challenge highlights popular horror novels that were adapted for the screen. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and some of their filmed versions. More