Late-night hosts dug into Donald Trump’s back-pedaling over footage of the controversial Venezuela boat strikes and a White House UFC fight for his 80th birthday.
Jimmy Kimmel
On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host checked in on the US president’s economy talk, as he once again condemned use of the word “affordability”:
“The reason he’s out talking about the economy is that he wants to convince us that it’s good, which it isn’t,” Kimmel explained. “But we also don’t know how bad it is because we stopped reporting job numbers. It’s like if the NBA just stopped keeping score. ‘We won.’ ‘And we won!’ Everybody wins, until we get tired of all the winning.”
“The good news is Trump says the tariffs are bringing in a boatload of money. The bad news is, Pete Hegseth just bombed the boat,” he quipped.
Kimmel then pivoted to the White House announcement that it will host a UFC fight on the lawn next June. “The event will take place on June 14, which just happens to be his 80th birthday,” Kimmel noted. “Whose 80th birthday theme is inviting men to beat the crap out of each other on his lawn? The most miserable son of a bitch in the world, that’s who.”
The host added that the weigh-ins, in which fighters step onto a scale pre-competition, will be held at the Lincoln Memorial. “That is not a joke,” Kimmel said.
“These are the same people who are all: ‘Don’t you dare desecrate the flag.’ Totally fine with guys in their underpants at the foot of Abraham Lincoln,” he added. “But it’s his birthday, he has to have a party for his birthday.”
“What a child he is,” he concluded. “Everyone around him treats him like he’s three years old.”
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert took to the Late Show stage on Tuesday amid frigid temperatures in New York, a day so cold it “makes you wish you were some place tropical, like on a boat in the Caribbean … but not near Venezuela … ,” he joked, referring to the ongoing controversy surrounding military strikes on Venezuelan boats the administration claims are operated by drug smugglers.
Furor has heated up over whether the White House will release the video of the so-called “double tap” strike on survivors of an attack in September that many have deemed in violation of international law. Last week, Trump said: “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’ll certainly release, no problem.”
“No problem – except for one problem,” said Colbert. “Yesterday, President Cranky Pants changed that to Problem.”
On Monday, Trump claimed he never said he would release the footage, causing Colbert to break out his Trump impression: “I never said that, you said that. You’re the one who said that. I’m not the president, you’re the president, and frankly you’re in a lot of trouble with this boat thing.”
“If you’re wondering why Trump is back-pedaling so hard on this video,” said Colbert, “people who’ve seen it have told CBS News that the two survivors were in the water for 45 minutes between strikes, and they were waving overhead before that second strike.” According to CBS, the action could be interpreted as survivors either calling for help or trying to wave off a second strike. “Well, yeah, why else would they be frantically waving after their boat blew up,” said Colbert.
“Another hint that the video is bad? Republicans are saying that it’s good,” Colbert went on. On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Tom Cotton, an Arkansas senator, claimed that the survivors’ act of taking off a T-shirt, which the video reportedly documents, wasn’t necessarily a call for help but “an attempt to signal to another cartel boat to come pick them up and pick up the cargo”.
“At one point it seemed like they were trying to spell out the word HELP,” Colbert mocked. “Which is drug smuggler acronym for: ‘Hey, enjoy some leftover pot.’”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped a Trump roundtable on Monday to announce a $12bn aid package for farmers impacted by tariffs. “Once again, President Trump has to swoop in and fix a problem created by the worst president in history,” he joked.
Meyers also mocked the renaming of the US Institute of Peace to the “Donald J Trump United States Institute of Peace”: “The guy is just jamming his name in everywhere,” he said. “Can’t wait to turn on my TV and see ‘Donald J Trump’s Tyler Perry’s Madea’.”
Over the weekend, while presenting medals in the Oval Office to 2025 Kennedy Center honorees, Trump thanked the jewelry company Tiffany & Co for redesigning the medallions and said he knows the staff there “very well” because the brand’s flagship store is right next to Trump Tower. “Also because he has a punchcard for engagement rings,” Meyers quipped.
And the White House recently unveiled the official 2025 gingerbread house – “which Trump immediately demolished to put in a ballroom”, joked Meyers.
