Late-night hosts ridiculed Donald Trump’s escalator conspiracy and “pathetic” obsession with attacking Joe Biden.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host remarked that the show was “broadcasting to about 75% of the country” with a dispute still raging on over certain media companies refusing to air the show despite ABC bringing it back.
Kimmel spoke about the president’s escalator malfunction this week while visiting the UN, something he claims was a vicious attack but one that the host called the “most ridiculous distraction from the Epstein files yet”.
He joked about “Magatha Christie and his team of defective detectives” obsessing over why the escalator suddenly stopped. “You know what another word for a frozen escalator is? Stairs,” he joked.
Kimmel said that after Trump’s UN speech, which was “an hour of bragging and bullying and BS”, Americans might want to “pretend to be Canadian” when going abroad.
Despite Trump claiming that the US is the “hottest country anywhere”, international coverage showed him to be the “world’s most powerful manbaby”.
This week, the president also signed an executive order to place TikTok under US ownership, so that instead “our government can spy on Americans”, with Rupert Murdoch among those who will have control.
“Are we really safer going from the Chinese government to the Murdochs?” he asked, while joking that “leftwing libtards control everything and it isn’t fair”.
Kimmel’s return to air on Tuesday also saw his second-highest-rated show in almost 23 years with the host also breaking his YouTube record.
“We couldn’t have done it without you, Mr President, so thank you very much,” he said.
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also spoke about Trump “waging a campaign of vengeance” against a UN escalator.
He said that Trump “walked up the stopped escalator sometimes known as stairs”, which the president has since described as a “harrowing experience”. Colbert poked fun at his long social media post about it.
“Usually when a drama queen throws that much of a hissy, at least Andy Cohen interviews them after the show,” he said.
Colbert was relieved that no one was hurt because he will “enjoy showing that footage every night until May”.
Trump has also been “taking a bunch of decorative dumps on everything” with a new presidential walk of fame in the White House, inspired by a display he saw at the Hilton.
“The White House doesn’t need a tribute to presidents; the White House is a tribute to presidents,” he said.
Inevitably it included a “pathetic” jab at Biden with a portrait replaced by a picture of his autopen.
This week has also seen the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, axe a panel encouraging women to enter the military as part of his “war on woke”, but it was created in 1951 by Harry Truman.
“Oh yes, that famous liberal snowflake,” he said.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers also spoke about the escalator and how Trump is often described by his followers as “a big, strong, masculine guy” yet he wrote about his terror over the “sharp metal edges” he was faced with this week. “It’s an escalator, not T-100,” Meyers said.
He played clips of Fox News hosts recounting the tale “like they’re telling a spooky story at a campfire” while they have also expressed annoyance at the Secret Service for not doing more. “Would it have been better if someone had screamed ‘Black Hawk down’?” he asked.
The week has seen Trump attempt to seek out the “dastardly perpetrators” who stopped an escalator and has had pundits tell of their own personal experience with escalators.
“Everywhere they look, Maga sees a shadowy conspiracy, whether it’s escalators, climate change or elections they don’t win,” he said. “Reality doesn’t conform to their preexisting agenda so they have to imagine a sinister fantasy.”
