Stephen Colbert: ‘Trump would eat a bicycle tire if you put it on a bun’

On Thursday night, Stephen Colbert responded to White House adviser Paula White-Cain’s claims that Donald Trump is “the GOAT”, while Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers addressed ICE and Jeffrey Epstein.

Stephen Colbert

Over on the Late Show, Colbert turned his attention to Trump’s appearance at the national prayer breakfast and his speech at the Washington Hilton hotel. Or as Colbert called the president’s 77-minute address, “special material just for the prayer munchers”.

Ahead of his remarks, Trump was introduced by White-Cain, the White House senior adviser who Colbert called a “haunted Bloomingdale’s mannequin”. White-Cain introduced the president as “the GOAT: the greatest of all time”.

“Now, I’m not an ordained minister,” says Colbert. “But as a Christian, I thought the greatest of all time was the guy named Jesus.” The host conceded that he considers Trump the “goat” in one sense though: “because I believe he would eat a bicycle tire if you put it on a bun”.

Colbert also pointed out that Trump is still fundraising despite being unable to run for the presidency again. “And just like Trump, his fundraising emails keep getting weirder.” Colbert showed one from this week that sent a survey to supporters with the subject line: “Will I hear from you before Valentine’s Day?” The host responded with a laugh: “Just what everyone wants on Valentine’s Day, a 79-year-old man begging you to ‘take poll’.”

Colbert then showed another section of the email, addressed to a supporter named Chris, which read: “I hope you STILL love me Chris, I didn’t think you’d leave me hanging this close to Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s kind of creepy, but not the first time that a president has made this kind of plea,” remarked the host, before cutting to a clip of a Ronald Regan’s 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate, with his famous call to “tear down this wall” edited to “why won’t Chris call?”

Jimmy Kimmel

Kimmel’s monologue focused on Trump’s Tuesday interview with NBC’s Tom Llamas, calling the Oval Office sit-down “a bacon double dementia burger with cheese” and branding the president’s comments about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions in Minnesota “dumb and embarrassing”.

“Look, I’m not happy with the two incidents,” Trump told NBC of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. “It’s not one or the other. He was not an angel, and she was not an angel.” Kimmel responded: “Keep your stupid thoughts in your diaper where they belong. And while we’re identifying angels, Jeffrey Epstein was your best friend, so maybe leave angels out of the conversation.”

Trump insisted that federal agents regret the killings, saying: “Two people out of tens of thousands of people, and you get bad publicity.” He added: “You know who feels worse about it than anybody? The people of ICE.” Kimmel responded: “Right, a lot of people would think it would be the children or the spouses of the victims, but there’s a lot of people who don’t have a brain that’s shrunken down smaller than one of an Oompa Loompa’s balls.”

After touching on Trump’s appearance at the national prayer breakfast, calling the president “maggot Theresa,” the host moved on to Thursday’s launch of TrumpRx, a self-branded pharmaceutical website selling GLP-1 weight-loss drugs at a reduced cost. “He promised to build a wall; instead he built a Walgreens,” laughed Kimmel before playing clips of Trump reeling off the purported savings: “1,200, 1,300, and even 1,400% [savings], and 500%”.

“Don’t forget 500,” laughed Kimmel. “You’ve got 1,400%, you can’t forget 500%.”

Seth Meyers

In Meyers’ A Closer Look segment, the host zeroed in on the appearance of Elon Musk and the US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in the Epstein files. In a 2012 email, Musk planned a visit to Epstein, asking: “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”

Meyers responded that the best response to such a question was probably: “Oh man, you just missed it! And now I’m tearing my house down and moving, sorrryyyy.” The host added: “My guess is Elon showing up to a party immediately kills the vibe. Dude probably shows up in his white Morpheus outfit and when someone says, ‘How should we cut up the cocaine?’ Elon says: ‘Chainsaw!’”

Responding to Trump’s comments that it’s time to move away from the topic of Epstein and “for the country to get on to something else”, Meyers asked: “Do you have something more important you want to talk about, like the two dozen photos you posted about the bathroom you renovated in the White House?”

Meyers later moved on to “wormy little chud” JD Vance, adding that the vice-president “has to pretend Trump is some sort of world historical thinker that comes up with genius insights that would never occur to mere mortals like us”. The host then recapped some of the president’s most notable insights, such as the time he said that the noise from windmills causes cancer, water destroys magnets and the time he recognized that the word “us” had the same spelling as the country “US.” “I just picked that up,” Trump said. “Has anyone ever thought of that before?” Meyers added sarcastically: “He’s so perceptive.”