Late-night hosts reacted to the murder of legendary director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as well as Donald Trump’s 10-minute tangent about Christmas snakes.
Jimmy Kimmel
“This is the kind of weekend that makes you wonder if things will ever feel good again,” said Jimmy Kimmel on Monday evening, after a couple days of horrific news: the terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach, a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island, and the “murder of one of our greatest directors and patriots, Rob Reiner, and his wife, Michele Reiner”.
“What we need in a time like this, besides common sense when it comes to guns and mental health care, is compassion and leadership,” he continued. “We did not get that from our president, because he has none of it to give. Instead, we got a fool rambling about nonsense.”
In a much-maligned post to Truth Social, Trump claimed that Reiner and his wife “passed away”, due to “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS”.
“Just when you think he can’t go any lower, he somehow finds a way to do that,” Kimmel responded. “His description of what happened of course is not at all what happened. And this is exactly what I’ve spoken about before. This rush to pin the tail on the donkey in pursuit of the Trump-friendly narrative.
“Not to mention blaming his death on the fact that he is an outspoken liberal, insulting someone who has just been murdered, who leaves children behind, without having any idea of what actually happened. It’s so hateful and vile.”
Kimmel noted that when he first saw Trump’s post, he thought it was fake; “even for him that seemed like too much,” he said. “But nothing is ever too much for him.”
Trump doubled down on his comments later on Monday, calling Reiner “deranged” to reporters at the White House and saying: “I thought he was very bad for our country.”
“That corroded brain is in charge of our lives,” said Kimmel. “If you voted for that, it’s OK to reconsider … I know from my personal interactions with Rob Reiner that he would want us to keep pointing out the loathsome atrocities that continue to ooze out of this sick and irresponsible man’s mouth. And so we’re going to do that, over and over again, until the rest of us wake up.”
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert did not wade into the tragedy on the Late Show, instead focusing on Trump’s Sunday, in which he “celebrated the first night of Hanukkah by holding a Christmas party, where he told a story that somehow lasted eight nights”.
Colbert set the scene: “Trump’s in front of a group of families, including small children who are waiting to see Santa – which, knowing this administration, is probably a shirtless RFK Jr.”
“Anyway, rather that give you some canned remarks, Trump decided to do a little crowd work.” After spotting a man named Dr James Jones, he launched into a 10-minute story about snakebites in Peru. “Twenty-eight thousand people die a year from a snakebite of a certain snake,” the president claimed. “It’s a viper, right?”
“This is a speech about Christmas,” Colbert reminded. “You might be thinking, why snakes? Have you forgotten the immortal words of Tiny Tim – ‘Oh God, it got me! Suck the poison out! Hit it with a crutch, you idiot!’”
Colbert also factchecked Trump’s claim, and found that from the years 2000 until 2015, only 10 people died of snake bites in Peru. To quote Trump himself: “This is a terrible Christmas story.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also delved into Trump’s rambling Christmas snake tale, which left him scarred. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I will have a great Christmas,” he said, “because the next time I walk into someone’s house for a Christmas party and see some green tinsel wrapped around the bannister, I’m going to go apeshit with a golf club screaming: ‘Watch out, it’s a viper!’”
“I’m starting to think that Maga and Fox News have switched sides in the war on Christmas, because it’s not just snake stories,” he added. “Trump has also been telling people not to buy their kids so many dolls, because his tariffs have caused price hikes.”
“You always need steel,” said Trump at a rally last week. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter – two or three is nice. But you don’t need 37 dolls.”
“OK first of all, Trump’s brain is so clearly stuck in the 1950s, because the only kids’ things he can think of are dolls and pencils,” Meyers laughed. “I mean, looking back, I guess we should all be happy that didn’t end in a snake story.”
Meyers also mocked Fox News for running with Trump’s doll story, in one clip advising its viewers to save money by not buying presents for adults this year, and forgoing slippers for grandma.
“You guys have spent years whining about the radical left’s ‘war on Christmas’, and now you’re telling people not to buy slippers for grandma?” he joked. “Also, you’re Fox News. The only people watching the show is grandma.”
