Portland remains a hot topic on the late-night talk shows, with both “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Daily Show” getting in some zingers on Thursday night.
Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at President Donald Trump’s antifa roundtable. During that event Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa recently had been arrested in Portland.
“You understand, there’s no antifa,” Kimmel said in his monologue. “This is an entirely imaginary organization. There’s not an antifa. This is no different than if they announced they rounded up a dozen Decepticons.”
Then Kimmel took aim at the president’s claim that in Portland, “You don’t even have stores anymore.”
“I don’t know what’s scarier, the idea that he’s making this all up or that he actually might believe this stuff,” Kimmel said. “There are no stores in Portland? It’s as if he’s getting his intelligence briefings from reruns of ‘The Walking Dead.’”
Kimmel went on to show videos sent in by viewers to show what life is like right now in “war-ravaged” Portland. One showed a Burgerville marquee that said “All new breakfast.”
“Clearly this is a whole socialist, anarchist order,” the viewer says on the video, “getting rid of old breakfast and insisting that we all choose their new breakfast.”
On “The Daily Show,” Josh Johnson also took on the topic of antifa, which Trump has designated a domestic terrorist organization.
“That’s tricky because, while there are people who identify as antifa, it isn’t really an official group. They don’t even have a website,” Johnson said. “Like, my cousin’s baby has its own website.”
Johnson also made fun of Noem, showing footage of a peaceful scene during her Tuesday visit to Portland and the camera panning to one protester dressed in a chicken costume.
“OK, that doesn’t look that scary,” Johnson said, “but you have to remember how scary it is for her to encounter a farm animal when she’s unarmed.”
Johnson showed another clip from Portland, this one at night, that showed protesters dancing while dressed in dinosaur and unicorn costumes.
“Listen, Trump, I’m trying to be an ally,” Johnson said, “but right now, I don’t really see dangerous criminals. I just see virgins.”
Johnson said he just wasn’t sure that the hubbub in Portland — “all happening in one city block, in front of one ICE building” — demanded a federal response.
“The rest of the city is completely normal,” Johnson said. “I mean, it’s still Portland. So it’s normal, but it’s like Portland normal. You know what I mean? Like, there will be a naked guy with a handlebar mustache riding a unicycle down the street. But that’s supposed to be happening, all right?”
Finally, Johnson closed with a comparison between antifa and another elusive Northwest figure.
“I look at antifa the way I look at Bigfoot,” Johnson said. “It’s big, scary and tearing up the Pacific Northwest.”
He then showed a mock documentary about antifa, using footage from William Shatner’s “The UnXplained” but adding edits and voiceovers about antifa.
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