Late-night hosts examined Donald Trump’s incoherent strategy on Iran and a new bombshell report on the FBI director Kash Patel’s alleged excessive drinking.
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart opened the latest Daily Show with a concession: Donald Trump “did a solid” by signing a bill that fast-tracked research on novel psychedelic drug treatment for mental health conditions, especially veterans suffering from PTSD.
Stewart cut to a clip of the president in the Oval Office babbling about the psychoactive drug ibogaine, which showed that users “experienced an 80% to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month”. Trump then joked: “Can I have some, please? I’ll take it. I’ll take it, whatever it takes.”
“Oh wow. He’s depressed, too,” Stewart joked. “Hey, don’t be depressed, sir. Trump won’t be president forever!
“But I have to say, there are little moments in these Oval Office gatherings that are somewhat revelatory of the president’s psyche, and really a good starting place for any accredited mental health professional,” he continued, before another clip of Trump telling his aides: “I don’t have time to be depressed. If you stay busy enough, maybe that works too. That’s what I do.”
Stewart jokingly agreed: “You can’t get depressed if you stay busy. It’s a little thing called ‘outrunning the darkness’. You can’t be depressed if the sadness can’t catch you.”
The host then riffed on Trump’s infamous Art of the Deal, as it applies to his incoherent strategy with his war in Iran. After facetiously running through many steps, he concluded that the art of this deal was “a cycle of demands, and threats, and premature declarations of victory that allows the negotiator enough wiggle room to, at almost any point, claim that they’ve achieved exactly what they’ve set out to do. Ultimately achieving a nuclear deal that will probably be worse than the nuclear deal Trump pulled our country out of with Iran to start a devastating war that has killed thousands of innocent Iranians, 13 American soldiers, eroded our credibility as the leader of the free world, sabotaged the world economy and will cost the American taxpayers, who knows, maybe trillions!
“And as that realization sinks in for a population weary of your malignant narcissism and impulsivity, Trump hits them with step 10.” As Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “Cuba’s gonna be next!”
“That’s right, motherfucker,” Stewart said. “Step 10: keep moving to outrun the darkness.”
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also marveled at Trump’s flip-flopping on Iran. “Our whole lives, the strait of Hormuz has been so wide open, we didn’t even know it existed,” he noted. “We put Trump in charge and in eight weeks, it’s been blocked more times than Melania’s bedroom door.
“And still, with all of this happening, Trump says the war in Iran is ‘going along swimmingly’,” he added. “Yeah, they’re swimming because no one can move their boats any more.”
Despite Trump’s claims otherwise, on Monday, the strait remained closed, and Trump was “back to threatening annihilation, and the price of gas is as high as half of our audience here right now”.
Kimmel then turned to a bombshell report by the Atlantic from this weekend that Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, drank excessively and was unreachable for large periods of time. (Patel has denied all claims.) Kimmel noted that Patel was “deeply concerned” about being fired, and had a meltdown about being locked out of his email earlier this month.
“Kash Patel was so worried about getting the axe when he had an issue logging on to his computer 10 days ago, he thought he’d been locked out and panicked. He started frantically calling aides to announce that he’d been fired,” Kimmel laughed. “According to nine people familiar with this outrage – he called nine people to tell them he’d been fired. Turned out it was just an IT issue.”
According to the Atlantic, “members of his security detail had difficulty waking him because he was seemingly intoxicated” and even requested “breaching equipment”.
“You know you have a problem when Seal Team Six shows up to do a wellness check,” Kimmel quipped. “We all thought Pete Hegseth was the Trump poster boy for drinking too much. All of a sudden, Kash is like, ‘Hold my beer – and my martini while you’re at it.’”
Stephen Colbert
On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert acknowledged the stoner holiday of 4/20. “These days, hitting a bong may be the only way to understand Trump’s strategy in Iran,” he quipped. On Thursday, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, so Iran reopened the strait of Hormuz. “And yes, it was already open before we started the war,” Colbert reminded. “But I believe the real strait of Hormuz was the friends we made along the way. I’m sorry, what’s that? And I’m being told we made no friends.”
Trump “immediately claimed victory”, posting on Truth Social: “Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.”
“And they never did!” Colbert exclaimed. “Until the next day, when Iran closed the strait of Hormuz again.”
Trump continued to flail without a strategy on Monday, after he again took to Truth Social to write: “We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR NICE GUY!”
“Yes, it’s important that he said that, because up until now, Trump’s been known as Mr Nice Guy,” Colbert deadpanned. “In fact, he’s mentioned over 30,000 times in the Nice Guy files.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers returned from a three-week holiday to a quiet news cycle. “That’s right, it’s been a quiet three weeks, and nothing really – what’s that? Oh, Iran says the strait of Hormuz is closed again? Uh, what, Iranian gunboats fired on a tanker? And sorry, the US seized an Iranian cargo ship and Iran is vowing to retaliate?
“OK, but that’s just the Middle East – what? Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi?” he continued. “He posted a meme of himself as Jesus, but then said he thought it was a meme of himself as a doctor? What? He said the pope is weak on crime?” And on and on, for another two minutes.
While Meyers was away, “we went from good news on Iran to ‘no more Mr Nice Guy’, and in the span of two days, this is like the 37th time it’s happened,” he said. “In fact, he keeps calling up reporters and bullshitting them about a deal that doesn’t exist.”
Meyers then played a clip from NewsNation of Trump traveling to Las Vegas at the weekend, and claiming that Iran had “agreed to everything”.
“Let’s go back to the beginning of that clip, because there was a very telling clue this was bullshit right at the top,” Meyers said. “He was in Vegas. You know what they say, what the president says happened when he’s in Vegas didn’t fucking happen.
“This is what Trump does. It’s what he’s done his whole life,” he concluded. “He’s bullshitting his way through everything, but now he’s doing it with a war, and it’s not working.”
