Late-night hosts talk about the hyper-partisanship of reactions to mass shootings and Donald Trump sending troops to Portland.
Jon Stewart
Back at his Monday night perch at the Daily Show after a weekend of multiple horrific mass shootings, Jon Stewart dissected a new routine response to violence in the US.
“Previously, the routine would be: We express our shock, we express our sadness, we offer our thoughts and prayers, we spend a day – maybe two – arguing about the appropriateness of bringing up guns at all, and then we do nothing until the next time,” he said. “But as our politics becomes more polarized, even that learned cycle of helplessness has been replaced by a new post-shooting pastime. That new pastime is: Was this one of yours?”
Stewart played several clips of pundits speculating the political affiliations of different perpetrators. “The guy is a rightwing Trump-supporting evangelical Christian,” said one. “He is a Biden supporter. Case closed,” said another.
“It’s America’s new gender reveal tradition,” Stewart joked. “‘Boom! It’s blue! Ha ha! I’m so happy to blame you! For violence!’ The game is so ubiquitous, now it’s often played before we even know who the perpetrator is.”
Stewart rejected the logic of political identity for mass shooters outright. “Who the fuck cares? These mass shootings don’t fit – who honestly cares? – neatly into our left-right paradigm. Mass shootings are probably caused by a complex fusion of mental health and access to weapons and attention-seeking, delusional nihilism married to an algorithmic underworld that sets these horrific acts in motion.”
“I don’t think any of these psychotic motherfuckers that are doing this are watching MSNBC,” he added. “I mean, I’m only judging from the ratings. To suggest that we don’t need to tackle any complex, deep-rooted issues haunting American society, we just need to stop saying a few choice bad words, and all our mentally broken young men will be fine, is not realistic.”
Stewart later reminded that it wasn’t always like this – back in the “good ol’ days of mass shootings”, commentators made a point “not shower attention on acts designed to get attention”.
He cut to dated clips of coverage of mass shootings, where media commentators said things like: “We will not say the gunman’s name or show his photograph,” or “We don’t like naming the gunman because so often they do things just to get attention.”
“Why are we taking the bait from these psychos?” Stewart wondered. “Doesn’t anybody think it’s weird that these people just started writing on bullets all of a sudden, like that’s the most effective way to get out their deeply held political beliefs? ‘Anti-Ice,’ enough said. Or is there the slightest possibility that these people are fucking with us?”
Jimmy Kimmel
After a tumultuous week, Jimmy Kimmel broadcast to all ABC affiliate stations – including boycotters Sinclair and Nexstar – from the Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
“We are broadcasting to 100% of the country tonight!” Kimmel cheered. “We’re very excited to be here. You know, last week at this time, we weren’t sure that we were going to make it to Brooklyn – not because our show had been pulled off the air, but because we were flying into Newark.”
He thanked New Yorkers for their support, and shouted out his home town of Mill Basin in south Brooklyn: “No one tells somebody from Brooklyn to shut up, and if they do we won’t listen.”
Kimmel later pivoted his focus to Trump. “The president has been hard at work coming up with all sorts of nonsense to distract us from the Epstein files” including the declassification of all government records on the long-lost aviator Amelia Earhart. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump said.
“We had no attention to that matter,” Kimmel responded. “Unless her final flight was to Epstein’s island, no one cares.”
Stephen Colbert
“My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight with the sobering news that our nation is at war … with Oregon,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. “How did we arrive at this dark day? I don’t know.” But on Saturday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was directing “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland”.
“Yes, history will never forget the battle of Portland, when we freed the citizens from the tyranny of overpriced doughnut shops and white ladies with dreadlocks named Raindrop,” Colbert joked. “Of course, this isn’t our first war with Portland. We’ve all seen the classic war movies like Full Flannel Jacket and All Vegan on the West Side Front.”
Why send troops to Portland? Colbert cited one “extremely credible” theory that Trump watched a single Fox News report earlier this month that mixed recent videos of small anti-Ice protests with videos of much larger protests in 2020. When Trump talked to Oregon’s governor Tina Kotek, who said there was no need to send troops as there was no rioting, Trump answered: “Well, wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?”
“Apparently, Trump thinks everything he sees on TV is real,” Colbert said, before mimicking Trump: “Next I’ll be sending troops into that building in New York where only murders happen.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped a strange weekend in which Trump shared an AI-generated video of himself promoting the medbed conspiracy. “If you don’t know what that is, congratulations on being a sane person,” said Meyers.
He let CNN host Brian Stelter explain that it’s a conspiracy theory popular in QAnon circles that elites have access to secret healing technology that’s been kept from the public.
“My question is: if medbeds exist, why hasn’t Trump used one?” Meyers wondered. “Is it possible that he thinks a medbed is a George Foreman grill?”
“The truly scary thing is that the president does not seem to know the difference between what is fiction and reality,” he continued, referring to Trump’s question to Kotek: “Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?”
“Yeah man, we all are!” Meyers responded. “The difference is that a lot of us have the critical thinking skills to suss out what’s real and what’s not. Like there used to be this show that portrayed you as a brilliant businessman that could turn meatloaf into a CEO, but we all know that in reality, you tried to sell steaks at an electronics store and you couldn’t keep a casino open. A casino! That’s like a mugger losing money.
“But hey, it’s great he’s finally catching on,” he concluded. “He’s like a golden retriever realizing that just because the tennis ball rolled behind the couch doesn’t mean it’s gone forever.”
