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Late-night hosts dug into the Trump administration’s vague intentions for the war in Iran, the conflict’s oil-price effect and a Maga rally in Kentucky with Jake Paul.
Seth Meyers
On Late Night, Seth Meyers checked in on Donald Trump’s now two-week-old war in Iran. “The president is maybe sort of threatening/teasing that he might put boots on the ground in Iran? But Republicans can’t seem to agree on whether they support that idea, or for how long, or why,” he explained.
The confusion comes from the top: Pete Hegseth, the “defense secretary/morning show host/fifth-year senior who just found out that yeah, he’s gonna need to do a sixth year” who made a big deal about turning the defense department into “the department of war” and “refocusing on the core mission: war fighting”.
“And before we go any further: was there a problem with the term ‘warfare’?” Meyers wondered. “Did we need ‘war-fighting’? It’s just a weirder way to say the same thing. It’s like asking someone if they want to go out to dinner-eating.”
“Modern Warfare was a popular video game. Modern War-Fighting is a janky board game your nana gets you because she sucks at listening.”
Though Hegseth promised to cut wasteful spending and focus on war, his department apparently spent $15.1m on ribeye steak and another $6.9m on lobster tail in the month of September alone.
“No wonder Hegseth always looks miserable – he’s 24/7 meat-constipated,” Meyers laughed. “That’s the face of a man war-fighting with his colon.”
“Also, it’s a real contradiction here telling us how tough you are, but now I can only picture you wearing a bib,” he added. “Hegseth claimed his focus was going to be on ‘war-fighting’ and ‘lethality’ but it sure seems like his actual priorities are very different,” as the department also spent billions on IT support for cable TV throughout the Pentagon and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a grand piano, among other luxury instruments.
“So the Pentagon seems a lot more focused on fancy meals and high-end instruments than laying out concrete goals for the war in Iran, which might explain why no one seems to know what we’re actually doing there,” Meyers noted, referring to numerous reports that behind closed doors the president has expressed interest in sending US troops into Iran.
“If you’re going to do something as serious as send troops into war, you should be able to explain why,” he concluded. “But they can’t! And Americans are angry.”
Stephen Colbert
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert looked at reports that Iran is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply travel. “Oh no, that’s truly going to make it a dire strait,” he quipped.
Iran has also covered the strait with shore-based missiles and explosive-laden boats. Ten vessels have been attacked since the fighting began, and on Tuesday evening, three more were hit with projectiles. “The strait of Hormuz is now the most unsafe place to be on a boat, narrowly surpassing ‘with your recently divorced uncle who wants to see what this baby can do’,” Colbert joked.
“There’s no end in sight, either,” as earlier this week, Iran said that until the US and Israel end their attacks, it will not allow “even one liter of oil” to leave the region. “Ok, but liters are meaningless to Americans,” said Colbert. “We need it in our system of measurement, like ‘gallon’ or ‘gulp’” or, for some gas station beverages, “double gulp”.
The conflict is causing “complete chaos” in the oil market, with prices for gas on a steep rise. Just two weeks ago, the average price per gallon of gas was $2.98; on Wednesday, it was $3.58, and Trump is “scrambling to minimize the political damage,” Colbert noted. Earlier this week, he posted on Truth Social that “short term oil price, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for USA, and World, Safety and Peace.”
“Easy for him to say – he doesn’t pay for his own gas. That’s anyone who stands behind him,” Colbert joked.
The weekend’s oil price spike caught the White House off-guard and, according to one insider, “surprised” the administration. “Really?! You were ‘surprised’ that bombing the place the oil comes from makes the oil cost more?” said a flustered Colbert, who compared the surprise to saying: “Huh, I thought burning down the Ann Taylor Loft would lead to more sensible workplace separates.”
Jimmy Kimmel
And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel observed that the mood around this weekend’s Oscars is “a little bit tense this year”, after the FBI warned local law enforcement that Iran hoped to launch a drone strike on the west coast.
“Isn’t this how Iron Man 3 started? The movie?” said Kimmel. “We can’t handle a drone strike. We barely survived the writers’ strike here.”
“I hope these Iranians realize, Donald Trump wants you to bomb us,” he added. “For him, that would be a win-win. He might even bomb us himself and blame it on you. Just keep that in mind.”
“Somehow we are in an even bigger mess than we were last month, and the month before that,” he later said. “Our president is a disaster, and everyone around him is too scared to bring that up. I mean, we have credible threats of retaliatory drone attacks on California, and this guy today is in Kentucky reminiscing about the way Obama went down the stairs.”
That, and inviting social media personality/troll Jake Paul on to the stage. During the rally, Paul said that the thing he learned from Trump was “courage” and how “we never back down from a fight”.
“I wonder if Jake knows that Trump got a note from his podiatrist to dodge the draft,” Kimmel laughed. “Do you think maybe he kept that a wonderful secret from Jake?”
