After four years of skewering Trump, the late-night TV hosts delight in his loss to Biden (original) (raw)

Stephen Colbert poured champagne and shot a T-shirt cannon. Trevor Noah called it “the beginning of a new week and a new world.” Seth Meyers declared, “Our long national acid trip is almost over.” James Corden sang a parody of the “Happy Days” theme song. The Jimmys, both Fallon and Kimmel, seemed exceptionally giddy.

Yes, the late-night TV hosts were pretty thrilled about the outcome of the presidential election.

Since the race was officially called for Joe Biden on Saturday morning, the comedians and their writers had some time to gather their thoughts about President Trump’s defeat, which is a lot to process after four years of skewering him on a nightly basis. The disdain is mutual: Trump has called Colbert a “no-talent guy” and a “low life”; deemed Fallon a “lost soul”; and said Kimmel was “terrible.”

And now, they are not sorry to see him go. Here are just some of the topics the hosts covered — and yes, they had a field day with Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

The nationwide celebrations of Trump’s loss

Colbert: “After Biden’s victory was announced, people everywhere flooded the streets, from Times Square to Denver to San Diego to Miami to Atlanta. That is the biggest presidential rally of all time. Never a good sign when the majority of Americans react to you losing your job the way they did to us getting bin Laden. It feels like America is — what’s the word? — great again.”

Kimmel: “It took almost the whole four years, but Donald Trump finally got a massive crowd to cheer him outside the White House. … People were dancing in the streets like Ewoks after they blew up the Death Star. Darth Tax Evader has been toppled, and America responded with a dance party.”

Fallon: “Trump’s staff told him people were dancing in the streets because Red Lobster brought back Crab Crackin’ Mondays.”

Meyers: “Did those people vote for Biden or did they just pull down a statue of Saddam? You know you were a bad president when people were celebrating an old White centrist like he was the sunset at Burning Man.”

Corden: “It felt like when they finally play ‘Shout’ at a wedding. Do you know what I mean? You know it’s coming, but if anything, the wait just made it better.”

Trump’s refusal to concede

Colbert: “The president has been holed up in the White House tantrum pantry, where things are so stressful, the Daily Mail reports, his staff is lighting rose-scented candles in an attempt to soften the environment and to combat the smell of fast food delivered to the president. Just a preview of the intense destankification the Biden-Harris team will have to do. Might be best to just replace the Resolute desk with a giant Glade plug-in.” (More below on what the hosts had to say about Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris.)

Kimmel: “Processing a loss like this is going to take time. I mean, this is the first time he’s ever failed at anything besides his casinos, his airlines, his mortgage, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump magazine, Donald Jr., Eric, etc. They keep saying, ‘Give him time.’ And we will give him time. He has until Jan. 19.”

Biden’s victory speech

Noah: “I don’t know about you guys, but after four years of having to listen to Trump, a normal presidential speech was almost weird. I was listening to the speech, like, wait, ‘So, we’re not blaming anything on Hillary? Nothing?’ ”

Colbert: “Why isn’t he talking about shower pressure and how windmills give you cancer? He didn’t even wish an accused child-sex trafficker well. That’s so unpresidential.”

Meyers: “I mean this in the best possible way, I remember very little of it. Like, I think he said some stuff about healing our divides or unifying the country or whatever. Honestly, I’m just relieved that a president-elect spoke to the nation and I didn’t immediately Google, ‘Canada how move to.’ ”

Fallon: “Americans are so damaged from the past four years, everyone was like, ‘When is he going to call someone an idiot? When is he going to insult somebody? Come on, spice it up, man.’ That’s a very different presidential speech than we’re used to. White supremacists were like, ‘No shout-out? What the hell?’ ”

Concern for Biden, who jogged to the podium and was startled by a confetti cannon

Noah: “Why are you blowing up things next to Joe Biden? At this point, Joe Biden’s campaign should be wrapping him in bubble wrap and storing him in the attic till Inauguration Day.”

Colbert: “Look at him! He’s running laps around Trump, in that he is running at all.”

Harris’s victory

Fallon: “Kamala Harris will be taking over for Mike Pence. It’s rare these days for a human to take over the job of a robot.”

Colbert, as cars honked during her speech: “That is the first time in the history of mankind it was nice to see a woman get honked at. ‘Hey, baby. Way to shatter that glass ceiling! You look really good in that executive branch! Oh yeah!’ ”

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle

Meyers: “Everyone thought they were holding a press conference at the upscale Four Seasons hotel, and it turned out they were holding it at a landscaping company called Four Seasons Total Landscaping. … It’s like if Trump announced he was holding a ‘Big rally at the Lincoln Memorial,’ deleted it, then announced he was holding a ‘Big rally at a Lincoln dealership!’ ”

Colbert: “How this happened is unclear. My guess? Incompetence. One theory is that someone in the campaign mistook the venue for a luxury hotel. That’s embarrassing, but not the first time something like this has happened. After all, who can forget when FDR, Stalin and Churchill met at the Yalta Discount Toilet Emporium?”

Noah: “The campaign says that they did mean to have the press conference at this venue, and I hope that that’s true. But it really just sounds like Trump’s legal team accidentally booked the wrong Four Seasons. And if that is the case, that would be so sad. I mean, do you know how incompetent you got to be to get catfished by a landscaping business? I love how the real Four Seasons tweeted that it has nothing to do with them because even hotel chains are trying to get away from Trump now.”

Corden: “The only way it could have been more hilarious is if the Four Seasons Total Landscaping shop was located in a seedy industrial strip mall sandwiched between a crematorium and a sex shop — and that’s exactly where it was. I cannot imagine a better location for the future Donald Trump Presidential Library.”

Meyers: “This is where the president’s lawyer held an official press conference falsely alleging a scheme of wide-scale voter fraud in order to undermine an election. … The only thing missing from this scene was a store called Metaphors R Us.”

Kimmel: “This is the second-most embarrassing thing to happen to Rudy this month. He somehow managed to out-Borat himself.” (Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s personal lawyers, spoke at the news conference.)

Colbert: “Looks like the Penguin announcing layoffs to his henchmen. Looks like a ‘Storage Wars’ episode hosted by the Crypt Keeper. Looks like the dedication of a new performing arts center at Chernobyl.”

A post-Trump future where it’s possible to think about anything else

Colbert: “The president doesn’t want to admit that it’s over, but it is. And when he leaves, you know what I’m looking forward to? Sleep. But also, the possibility that, for the first time in four years, we will be able to shift our collective focus away from him on to anything else. Maybe each other.”

Meyers: “Even I’m surprised at just how relieved I am that we don’t have to suffer through another four years of Donald Trump, the single most annoying human being on the face of the earth. Even if you put aside everything else about him — the racism, venality, cruelty, corruption, mendacity, vindictiveness and flagrant disregard for any life other than his own — he is still just a world-historically irritating man. And the most irritating thing about him was my and many people’s absolute, round-the-clock inability to look away.”

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