Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s lavish visit to South Korea, where he received a ceremonial golden crown.
Seth Meyers
Trump continued his tour of Asia on Wednesday, where he’s been “getting the royal treatment he so desperately craves”, according to Seth Meyers. “He wishes he could get the same treatment back here at home. He made it clear, for example, that he’s super-jealous of China’s authoritarian government.”
Speaking to South Korean leaders, Trump assured them that the country’s partnership with the US guaranteed that “you’ll have everything done very, very quickly … as fast as any other country, other than China”, because China “has a good system” where Xi Jinping can “approve things immediately” whereas he had to “wait two weeks”.
“I’m sorry, you have to wait to two weeks?” the Late Night host mocked. “I thought you were going to say two years. For the rest of us, two weeks is very fast. Have you ever tried to make a dentist appointment? I chipped a tooth once, and they asked me if I was available to come in December 2027, and I just said ‘fuck it’ and let the tooth fall out.”
Trump also said that he stuffed the so-called big, beautiful bill to the gills so that he would never have to work with Congress again. “That’s how democracy works. You’re supposed to get the approval of Congress,” said Meyers. “For example, you can’t just bomb boats wherever the hell you want – that’s illegal and unconstitutional. And that’s not just me saying that. That’s coming from Republicans.”
Speaking on Fox News, Rand Paul, the Republican senator from Kentucky, called Trump’s bombing of alleged drug traffickers off the coast of South America “extrajudicial killings” that were “akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers”.
“Of course, when you say this is how China does it, that just makes Trump love it even more,” Meyers said, laughing. “He’s like: ‘I don’t want to blow up a boat in two weeks. I want to do it now!’”
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also checked in on Trump’s Asia trip. “He’s still flying around the world right now, collecting gifts wherever he goes,” he said. “He’s like reverse Santa, because you want to stay as far away from his lap as possible.”
On Wednesday, Trump’s tour of Asia “took him to his second favorite Korea: south”, where he was greeted by a South Korean military band playing YMCA. “I know that’s kinda his song, at this point, but it really undercuts the gravity of an official presidential occasion,” Colbert remarked.
“I’m not going to say the Koreans brown-nosed him, but they got so far up there I’m pretty sure they snorted one of his tonsils. Because they gave Donald Trump the only thing he’s missing at this point: a big golden crown.” Their official lunch also featured mini beef patties with ketchup. “They’re literally making him the Burger King!” Colbert quipped.
Trump’s day ended with a dinner alongside fellow world leaders, including the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney. Trump then posted on Truth Social: “We didn’t come to Korea to see Canada!”
Colbert retorted: “Well, we also didn’t come to South Korea to eat burger patties with ketchup, but that’s just traveling with a toddler for you.”
Jimmy Kimmel
“Just about every day I have a moment where I think, ‘Man, things are terrible,’” said Jimmy Kimmel. “The government has been shut down for like a month. The Republicans are trying to force Congress to choose between healthcare and food to open it up. We’ve got a bunch of ghouls running the country, prices are high, people are suffering. And just when you start to think, ‘Wow, it couldn’t get any worse than this,’ God throws a curveball like this one.”
That would be the frantic search for research monkeys that escaped the wreckage of a truck crash in Mississippi. Authorities warned that the six escaped monkeys could be aggressive toward humans, and could be potentially infected with hepatitis C, herpes or Covid. “Hepatitis, herpes and Covid?! Who are these monkeys hanging out with, Charlie Sheen?” Kimmel joked.
Meanwhile, “there’s an angry orangutan on the loose in South Korea”, said Kimmel, as “President Furious George was in Chungju today as part of his Asia-palooza tour. And they’re keeping him happy by giving him presents everywhere he goes.” Including, of course, the golden crown.
“How nice,” Kimmel deadpanned. “I guess they were watching millions of us marching saying we didn’t want a king and they thought, ‘Hey, I have a great idea for a gift.’
“It’s so embarrassing how easy he is to manipulate,” he added. “It’s like when you give kids Pokémon cards to get them to behave.”
