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Late-night hosts reacted to Democrats’ slate of wins across the country and Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City mayoral race.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers celebrated Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York mayoral race, becoming the first south Asian and Muslim mayor of the biggest city in the US, as well as New York’s first mayoral candidate since 1969 to receive more than a million votes.
“This is the kind of energy Democrats have been desperately seeking for years,” said an enthusiastic Meyers. “I haven’t seen a crowd of New Yorkers this excited since the time the real Timotheé Chalamet stopped at a Timotheé Chalamet lookalike contest in Manhattan.
“And if you thought Trump was bummed about the results before Mamdani’s speech, he probably felt even worse” when he heard Mamdani say: “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up!”
“OK, first of all, you do not need to tell him to turn the volume up,” Meyers joked. “He’s a 79-year-old Fox News addict, you know the volume is maxed out.
“Mamdani correctly calculated that standing up to Trump was a better political strategy than whatever this is,” he continued, cutting to a clip of the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer – a New York establishment Democrat who did not endorse Mamdani – droning on about “Kentucky fried french fries” at a press conference.
Asked who he voted for, Schumer declined to specify, instead saying: “Look, I voted, and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”
“You’re the Democratic leader, and you won’t even say you voted for the Democratic nominee?” Meyers fumed. “Why are you treating it like a secret?
“Things happen here, and they happen fast,” he said in a final ode to New York. “How fast? A dude who was polling at 1% a year ago was just elected mayor, and that’s what makes New York City great. And if you can’t hear the resounding message voters sent last night, then maybe you should” – to quote Mamdani – “turn the volume up.”
Stephen Colbert
“I don’t know about you guys, but tonight my heart is full of something I have not felt in almost a year, and that is … good?” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show, his first since Democrats swept races across the country, offering a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration.
“Today Democrats are walking around with a spring in their step like a divorced mom in her 40s whose new haircut just got her carded at two different bars,” he joked.
Colbert also celebrated Mamdani’s win in New York. The 34-year-old state assemblyman “didn’t just defeat Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, he nut-punched New York’s fattest cats”, he said. “The billionaires had the knives out for Zohran, pumping massive amounts of cash into anti-Mamdani groups. I’m talking big-roll high-rollers,” including the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, son of Estée, who donated $2.6m to stop him; hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, who spent $1.75m on anti-Mamdani campaigns; and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who spent $2m.
“So it’s a bad day for billionaires,” said Colbert. “Or as it’s also known, still a pretty good day! They’re still billionaires.”
Speaking to supporters after clinching the victory, Mamdani offered a different political vision than the federal government in Washington. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he said.
“And as always, the port authority will be the smell,” Colbert added.
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel cheered on the Democrats’ many wins on Tuesday. “We needed a big night,” he said. “Democrats have had fewer wins this year than the Jets.
“This was not a good night for the president,” he continued. “Everything he touched was a loser. Trump hasn’t been this embarrassed since there was a Donald Trump Jr.”
“But if you’re tired of all the losing, fear not! He’s got an excuse,” Kimmel said. “In fact, he’s got two of them.” Trump wrote on Truth Social: “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. AND SHUTDOWN. WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”
“Now, if Republicans had won and he wasn’t on the ballot, would he take credit for that?” Kimmel responded. “Oh yes, he definitely would.”
Trump then posted “… AND SO IT BEGINS!” – “which was either a response to Mamdani winning the mayoral race, or he just sat down on the toilet, I don’t know,” said Kimmel. “I mean, seriously, what is that supposed to mean? What would motivate him to post ‘and so it begins’ at almost midnight?”
Kimmel then pivoted to the government shutdown, now the longest in US history at 37 days. “Trump has been desperately trying to convince anyone who will listen that Democrats are responsible for the shutdown and that it has nothing to do with him trying to hide the Epstein files,” he said. “The gaslighting has reached a fever pitch, as Trump cuts off the supply of food to children, families, senior citizens, etc.”
But, Kimmel said, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, “wants you to know: just because they’re cutting off your food and want to cut off your health insurance, that doesn’t mean they don’t care”.
As Johnson told reporters: “Every hardworking American in any place that’s missed a paycheck, anyone who has been made to suffer … anyone who is hurting, you have a home in the Republican party.”
“Yes, you have a home in the Republican party!” Kimmel scoffed. “You’ll be living under the stairs like Harry Potter and you’re not allowed in the fridge, but you do have a home.”
