If you decided to skip the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday evening and just tune into to the late night talk shows to get all of your information (and, these days, the gap between comedy and news is forever narrowing), then you probably came away thinking only one thing: the debate for the second most powerful job in the free world was dreadfully boring. (Jimmy Kimmel had to recuse himself from comment since he is actually running for vice-president.)
Stephen Colbert said the moderator at the contest between Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton’s would-be second-in-command, Tim Kaine, told the audience to “muffle your yawns, silence your blinks, and apply the Breathe Right strip before you fall asleep in your seats”.
The Daily Show spent most of its live broadcast after the debate talking about how lackluster the whole thing was. Trevor Noah flat-out said: “The debate was boring. It was boring as hell.” He joked that it was so boring that the ratings showed that “80 million people had not watched the debate”, adding that it was the first time a broadcast had negative ratings.
“It was the biggest white guy argument in history,” Noah said. He saw little differentiation between the two candidates and said that if they were both bags you were picking up at the airport you would definitely get them mixed up.
However, he saw that each candidate had a distinctive job to do. Tim Kaine had to seem affable and lifelike to counteract Clinton, “who died six weeks ago”, and Mike Pence had to make some of Donald Trump’s crazier statements seem palatable. He said Pence’s performance was sponsored by Febreze and that he was basically spraying the air freshener and saying, “Nothing smells here. Nothing smells here.”
Ultimately, Noah was swayed by Pence’s defenses of Trump, saying that they were so believable it almost made him want to vote for Pence. However, he made a very apt analogy for his reverence. “[Pence] is the guy who’s not good at convincing his friend not to drive drunk but is very good at convincing the cop that his friend isn’t drunk,” he said.
Stephen Colbert, who was also performing live after the debate, came down for Pence, though it wasn’t with much distinction. “It was like watching a loaf of white bread get pistol-whipped by a jar of mayonnaise,” he said. “There wasn’t much flavor, but there was a clear winner.”
Colbert then spent the majority of his monologue poking at Pence, particularly because he signed a “religious freedom” bill into law in Indiana that allows businesses to refuse services to gay customers. He said that Pence saying that he “spends a bit of time on his knees every day” was evidence that he is “very close with Vladimir Putin”. Then he chided Pence for when he accused Kaine of “whipping out that Mexican thing again”. Sure does sound kinky.
He concluded that he was “fuzzing” happy that the debate was over but ultimately concluded that it would really have no bearing on the election. “The team with the best vice-quarterback always wins the Super Bowl,” he said sarcastically.
Unlike his performance after the presidential debates, Seth Meyers’ show was not live and didn’t spend much time talking about the debate, especially since there was much more important international news to talk about: Kim Kardashian’s robbery. Still, he echoed the general sense that the face-off was a little bland. “It was pretty much the same debate I had with my wife about what color to paint the foyer,” he said. “Do we want eggshell or ivory?”
