{"id":180880,"date":"2025-09-30T20:54:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T20:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/180880\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T20:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T20:54:12","slug":"jon-stewart-on-us-violence-these-mass-shootings-dont-fit-neatly-into-our-left-right-paradigm-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/180880\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Stewart on US violence: \u2018These mass shootings don\u2019t fit neatly into our left-right paradigm\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts talk about the hyper-partisanship of reactions to mass shootings and Donald Trump<\/a> sending troops to Portland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jon Stewart<\/p>\n

Back at his Monday night perch at the Daily Show after a weekend of multiple horrific mass shootings, Jon Stewart<\/a> dissected a new routine response to violence in the US.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPreviously, the routine would be: We express our shock, we express our sadness, we offer our thoughts and prayers, we spend a day \u2013 maybe two \u2013 arguing about the appropriateness of bringing up guns at all, and then we do nothing until the next time,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as our politics becomes more polarized, even that learned cycle of helplessness has been replaced by a new post-shooting pastime. That new pastime is: Was this one of yours?\u201d<\/p>\n

Stewart played several clips of pundits speculating the political affiliations of different perpetrators. \u201cThe guy is a rightwing Trump-supporting evangelical Christian,\u201d said one. \u201cHe is a Biden supporter. Case closed,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s America\u2019s new gender reveal tradition,\u201d Stewart joked. \u201c\u2018Boom! It\u2019s blue! Ha ha! I\u2019m so happy to blame you! For violence!\u2019 The game is so ubiquitous, now it\u2019s often played before we even know who the perpetrator is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stewart rejected the logic of political identity for mass shooters outright. \u201cWho the fuck cares? These mass shootings don\u2019t fit \u2013 who honestly cares? \u2013 neatly into our left-right paradigm. Mass shootings are probably caused by a complex fusion of mental health and access to weapons and attention-seeking, delusional nihilism married to an algorithmic underworld that sets these horrific acts in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think any of these psychotic motherfuckers that are doing this are watching MSNBC,\u201d he added. \u201cI mean, I\u2019m only judging from the ratings. To suggest that we don\u2019t need to tackle any complex, deep-rooted issues haunting American society, we just need to stop saying a few choice bad words, and all our mentally broken young men will be fine, is not realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stewart later reminded that it wasn\u2019t always like this \u2013 back in the \u201cgood ol\u2019 days of mass shootings\u201d, commentators made a point \u201cnot shower attention on acts designed to get attention\u201d.<\/p>\n

He cut to dated clips of coverage of mass shootings, where media commentators said things like: \u201cWe will not say the gunman\u2019s name or show his photograph,\u201d or \u201cWe don\u2019t like naming the gunman because so often they do things just to get attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we taking the bait from these psychos?\u201d Stewart wondered. \u201cDoesn\u2019t anybody think it\u2019s weird that these people just started writing on bullets all of a sudden, like that\u2019s the most effective way to get out their deeply held political beliefs? \u2018Anti-Ice,\u2019 enough said. Or is there the slightest possibility that these people are fucking with us?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

After a tumultuous week, Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> broadcast to all ABC affiliate stations \u2013 including boycotters Sinclair and Nexstar \u2013 from the Howard Gilman Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are broadcasting to 100% of the country tonight!\u201d Kimmel cheered. \u201cWe\u2019re very excited to be here. You know, last week at this time, we weren\u2019t sure that we were going to make it to Brooklyn \u2013 not because our show had been pulled off the air, but because we were flying into Newark.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thanked New Yorkers for their support, and shouted out his home town of Mill Basin in south Brooklyn: \u201cNo one tells somebody from Brooklyn to shut up, and if they do we won\u2019t listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kimmel later pivoted his focus to Trump. \u201cThe president has been hard at work coming up with all sorts of nonsense to distract us from the Epstein files\u201d including the declassification of all government records on the long-lost aviator Amelia Earhart. \u201cThank you for your attention to this matter!\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had no attention to that matter,\u201d Kimmel responded. \u201cUnless her final flight was to Epstein\u2019s island, no one cares.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fellow Americans, I come to you tonight with the sobering news that our nation is at war \u2026 with Oregon,\u201d said Stephen Colbert<\/a> on the Late Show. \u201cHow did we arrive at this dark day? I don\u2019t know.\u201d But on Saturday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was directing \u201cSecretary of War\u201d Pete Hegseth to \u201cprovide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, history will never forget the battle of Portland, when we freed the citizens from the tyranny of overpriced doughnut shops and white ladies with dreadlocks named Raindrop,\u201d Colbert joked. \u201cOf course, this isn\u2019t our first war with Portland. We\u2019ve all seen the classic war movies like Full Flannel Jacket and All Vegan on the West Side Front.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why send troops to Portland? Colbert cited one \u201cextremely credible\u201d theory that Trump watched a single Fox News report earlier this month that mixed recent videos of small anti-Ice protests with videos of much larger protests in 2020. When Trump talked to Oregon\u2019s governor Tina Kotek, who said there was no need to send troops as there was no rioting, Trump answered: \u201cWell, wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cApparently, Trump thinks everything he sees on TV is real,\u201d Colbert said, before mimicking Trump: \u201cNext I\u2019ll be sending troops into that building in New York where only murders happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers<\/a> recapped a strange weekend in which Trump shared an AI-generated video of himself promoting the medbed conspiracy. \u201cIf you don\u2019t know what that is, congratulations on being a sane person,\u201d said Meyers.<\/p>\n

He let CNN host Brian Stelter explain that it\u2019s a conspiracy theory popular in QAnon circles that elites have access to secret healing technology that\u2019s been kept from the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy question is: if medbeds exist, why hasn\u2019t Trump used one?\u201d Meyers wondered. \u201cIs it possible that he thinks a medbed is a George Foreman grill?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truly scary thing is that the president does not seem to know the difference between what is fiction and reality,\u201d he continued, referring to Trump\u2019s question to Kotek: \u201cAm I watching things on television that are different from what\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah man, we all are!\u201d Meyers responded. \u201cThe difference is that a lot of us have the critical thinking skills to suss out what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not. Like there used to be this show that portrayed you as a brilliant businessman that could turn meatloaf into a CEO, but we all know that in reality, you tried to sell steaks at an electronics store and you couldn\u2019t keep a casino open. A casino! That\u2019s like a mugger losing money.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut hey, it\u2019s great he\u2019s finally catching on,\u201d he concluded. \u201cHe\u2019s like a golden retriever realizing that just because the tennis ball rolled behind the couch doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s gone forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts talk about the hyper-partisanship of reactions to mass shootings and Donald Trump sending troops to Portland.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-180880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}