Late-night hosts react to speculation over Donald Trump’s health and the newly released screenshot of Trump’s alleged lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein.
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart returned to his Monday perch for The Daily Show’s new season amid rampant speculation over the president’s health, after he wasn’t seen in public for several days over Labor Day weekend. “You people, you reporters, have no chill!” Stewart mock-scolded after several clips of talking heads wondering if Trump had died. “Guy can’t take a few days for some R&R and a non-surgical breast reduction without everybody suddenly pulling out the toe tags? It does say something about the ubiquity of Donald Trump in our lives that we don’t hear from him for 20 minutes and we’re like: ‘He’s dead!’”
“Of course Trump didn’t die in office,” he added. “But I wouldn’t put it past him, trying once again to take credit for something Biden had already accomplished.”
Still, Stewart conceded, “something is up with his health.” He played another series of clips of reporters commenting on the president’s swollen ankles, bruised hands and “lumpy” eyes.
“See, this is the problem with our superficial Instagram culture,” he joked. “We have unrealistic expectations in this country about the amount of fluid our bodies should be able to clear subcutaneously. It sends the wrong message to young people. These really are not medical appraisals. It’s just more like insults.”
But, to be fair, “it’s not just the physical symptoms that make you think the president is transitioning from this mortal coil. It’s that whenever any of his biggest supporters are with him, it sounds like they’re saying goodbye,” Stewart noted. “Once you begin to notice it, you begin to see really the whole vibe around this president is very Make-A-Wish kid. Everyone who shows up to his office makes one of his dreams come true.”
Stewart listed some of these so-called “Make-A-Wish moments”, such as Trump receiving an honorary United States Marshals Service badge, calls for him to receive a Nobel peace prize, and the supreme court allowing federal agents to deport people based on their race or spoken language.
“Hey, the good news: the supreme court supports affirmative action based on race,” Stewart said. “The bad news is that action is Ice deporting you. What the fuck? What kind of Make-A-Wish kid wants to nullify the fourth amendment?”
Stewart concluded with a black-and-white filter mimicking The Twilight Zone. “For your consideration: a nation held hostage by the fragile ego of a manbaby president, who may or may not be dying of hand syphilis,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s dying. He’s weirdly puffy. And who we’re trapped with for at least three more years … in The Twilight Zone.”
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert celebrated the 10th anniversary of The Late Show on Monday but remained focused on current events – namely, Trump’s executive order renaming the Department of the Defense as the Department of War.
“Ooh, a rebrand!” Colbert joked. “You know what that means! The Pentagon is getting bangs!”
Trump explained that the Department of Defense was so named after the country “went woke”.
“Remember, they changed it to the Department of Defense during the Truman administration,” said Colbert. “You know, that famously woke era. After all, they did drop the atomic bomb from the Enola Gay … What’s wrong with Enola Straight, huh?”
In other news, “no matter how many Democratic cities Donald Trump invades, the Jeffrey Epstein story just won’t hang itself”, Colbert quipped. And on Monday, the congressional oversight committee released a screenshot of a letter that Trump allegedly wrote to Epstein on Epstein’s birthday, in which it alluded to a “wonderful secret” the two shared within a doodle of a naked woman’s body, with Trump’s signature representing pubic hair. (This was after Trump denied the story and sued the Wall Street Journal for $10bn.)
Trump’s letter was reportedly within the “friends” section of Epstein’s birthday book. “It’s just like the sitcom’s theme song,” Colbert quipped, singing to the tune of Friends: “So no one told you you were on a pervert’s plane / Oh wait, they told you and you still got on his plane.”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel relished the boos that Trump received while attending the US Open over the weekend. “Do you know how much of a jerk you have to be to get booed by a tennis crowd?” he laughed. “They’re not, like, natural booers. They’re Chablis-drinking Volvo drivers who think strawberries are dessert. Hockey fans will boo a baby wearing a wrong jersey. Tennis fans? If they’re booing, you deserve it.”
At the match, Trump sat in the Rolex booth – “anything with a crown is like catnip to him, he can’t resist it,” Kimmel noted. And once again, “all eyes were on his hands”. The president’s right hand was obviously plastered with, as Kimmel described it, “some kind of putty” that did not match the color of his skin.
“Between his face, his neck and his hand, his skin has more colors than a Sherwin-Williams store right now,” Kimmel joked. “It’s too bad he hates drag queens, because they could teach him a thing or two about blending foundation.”
Kimmel then pivoted to “the story Trump doesn’t want you to see”: the ongoing Epstein scandal, especially after Democrats released the image of the apparent birthday letter. “That is not a birthday note. That is a signed confession,” said Kimmel. “That letter is so creepy, it should have its own documentary series on Netflix.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers briefly reacted to the Epstein birthday note, which was released just before taping. “Now I think I know why he’s been spinning out so much,” he said. “Aside from his ties to a notorious sex trafficker, he doesn’t want people to know he’s such a shit artist. Just get a card from Hallmark next time!”
Meyers also discussed Trump’s rebrand of the Department of Defense, named in 1945, to the less “woke” title of Department of War.
“Are you saying America went woke in 1945? I must have missed that in the old news reels,” he laughed. “So what’s this really about? Is a name change supposed to intimidate our enemies? Or is the intended audience here at home? Because while the president is threatening war abroad, he seems even more interested in waging war against Americans,” such as threatening to deploy national guard troops to Chicago. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is not going to look good on your application for a Nobel peace prize,” Meyers joked, aiming at Trump supporters clamoring for the award.
“Trump doesn’t just want to intimidate enemies abroad, he wants to cow his opponents into submission here at home,” he concluded. “At the same time, he doesn’t seem to remember the things he says or does on a daily basis, or where he is, or where he just came from.”