Late-Night Hosts React to Donald Trump Victory: See What Seth Meyers, Colbert, Kimmel and More Had to Say
Following Jon Stewart’s post-election pep talk, the rest of TV’s late-night hosts are getting their chance to weigh in on the results of the 2024 presidential race, which culminated in a Donald Trump victory.
Come Wednesday evening, NBC’s Seth Meyers became the first comedian to give his two cents following Vice President Kamala Harris’ concession speech. “What a privilege to be here with you, to be here with my colleagues, to not feel alone,” the Late Night host began. “This is a joyful place to work, and we hope you can see the joy when you’re watching at home. We’re not going to let anything take that joy away, even when we’re talking about things that are not particularly joyful.”
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Meyers then wagered the following example: “I don’t think Donald Trump is a good person. I’d even go so far as to say he’s a bad person. Now, in my defense, I’m only basing that on everything I’ve ever been taught about what makes someone good or bad. But this is real, and this is something I accept: Half the country thinks he’s a good person, or they don’t care that he’s not because they think he’s a good president, and because of that, he’s going to be our president,” he said. “Again, that’s how democracy works in America, a country that is a privilege to live in, even on a morning like today.”
Stephen Colbert weighed in on the results on CBS’ Late Show, exclaiming in his monologue: “Well, f–k… it happened. Again.” He lamented that yesterday, he walked around proudly wearing his “I Voted” sticker, but today, “I wore my ‘I Am Questioning My Fundamental Belief in the Goodness of Humanity’ sticker.” He also laughed off the idea that as a comedian, part of him wanted Trump to win: “No one tells the guy who cleans the bathroom, ‘Wow, you must love it when someone has explosive diarrhea. There’s so much material for you to work with!'”
Jimmy Kimmel, who loudly opposed Trump during the campaign, revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that he spent a lot of time thinking about what he should say tonight before concluding: “There’s nothing. Good night, everybody!” He called election night “the worst Taco Tuesday of my life,” while poking fun of Trump’s insistence that Democrats cheat in every election: “This time, we chose not to, I guess.” Later, he compared Donald Trump to the Emperor from Star Wars: “He’s old, he’s evil and he keeps coming back with no reasonable explanation whatsoever.”
The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon cracked that “no matter who you voted for, I think all Americans can agree: It’s going to be a rough Thanksgiving.” He also termed Trump’s win “a huge comeback for someone who literally never went away” and joked that despondent Democrats were turning to Elon Musk and saying: “So tell me more about living on Mars. How close are we?” Trump’s convincing win means that “for the first time ever, he’ll accept the results of an election,” Fallon added.
On After Midnight, host Taylor Tomlinson started off by saying that “it’s a honor to be on television while women are still allowed to be.” She admitted she spent election night “rewatching Game of Thrones to calm down” and “just desperately trying to get myself back to 2011,” when Joe Rogan “wasn’t helping people decide elections. He was just helping people decide if they were gonna eat bugs for money.” As for the prospect of a second Trump presidency, she declared that “reboot culture has gone too far. And I say that as the host of a show that was rebooted.” She also said “I’m mad at myself for believing this wouldn’t happen… I’m mad at CBS for hiring me so that I cannot immediately leave the country.”
Stewart’s fellow Daily Show host Desi Lydic opened Wednesday’s show by announcing: “I slept two hours last night, and I feel like s–t. But here we are!” She went on to say that, with Hillary Clinton and now Harris, “we have had two qualified, accomplished women nominated for president, and both times, they lost to the worst man in the whole country… Instead of breaking the glass ceiling last night, America decided to get back with her dirtbag ex.” She also mocked cable news pundits for throwing out conflicting reasons why Harris lost: “Honestly, I don’t really care why she lost. I care why he won… Whatever’s wrong with him, we f–king love it. In this moment, Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to the American people, and it might be time to take a good, f–king hard look.”
The Associated Press projected that Trump won the election at 5:38 am ET Wednesday after he clinched the crucial swing state of Wisconsin, giving him more than the 270 electoral votes needed to secure the presidency. With his victory, Trump becomes the first candidate to win the presidency in two non-consecutive terms in more than 130 years, since Grover Cleveland did it in 1892. (Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 but lost to Joe Biden in 2020.) He is set to be officially sworn into office as the 47th President in January.
Speaking to the Daily Show viewership around 1 am ET Wednesday morning, hours before the AP would call the race for Trump, Stewart said, “We’re going to come out of this election and we’re going to make all kind of pronouncements about what this country is, and what this world is, and the truth is, we’re not really going to know s–t. And we’re going to make it seem like this is the finality of our civilization.” But rather than accept that doomsday scenario, he posited, “We’re all going to have to wake up [Wednesday] morning and work like hell to move the world to the place that we prefer it to be.”
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