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Late-night hosts checked in on Donald Trump’s costly “improv” war in Iran, which he cannot seem to focus on for more than one minute.
Jon Stewart
This week marks a month of Donald Trump’s unauthorized war in Iran, “and as we all know, one month is the elevated threat anniversary”, joked Jon Stewart on Monday evening.
“Trump is threatening to escalate our bombing campaign unless Iran opens the strait that they closed in response to Trump’s bombing campaign,” the Daily Show host explained. “I believe we’ve entered what General Patton used to refer to as the ‘human centipede portion’ of the war.”
Stewart then mocked news coverage of the strait of Hormuz closure, which focused on potential disruptions to the supply of Dubai chocolate, the chocolate bar with pistachio paste that has become a favorite treat of influencers. “Oh no! What will our influencers stand in line to pretend to eat?” he joked. “Dubai chocolate? My god! It’s been an American staple for tens of days.”
“I can’t believe how the news has to frame world events to try to make Americans care,” Stewart continued. “The whole region is being flattened. Innocent people are dying. Their food and fuel are in total chaos, and our news is like, ‘If this goes on any longer, say goodbye to your stuffed-crust pizza!’”
The host then tore into Trump’s inability to focus on the war, not letting a major military escalation prevent him “from doing his rounds at the golf course and at a Saudi investment meeting in Miami”, he said. “Because God forbid, during a war, he let the precipice of world war three yuck his yum in any way.”
“I find it so astounding that this nuclear-armed manbaby doesn’t seem to have any understanding of the confusion and anxiety that his ill-planned adventure in Iran is causing this country,” he added. “He’s just trucking along like it’s any old episode of The Apprentice.”
On Friday, the president addressed a room full of Saudi investors – “who you would think might be very concerned about the bombings in their neighborhood”, Stewart noted – but “he wants to let them know: we don’t have to talk about that at all.”
At the briefing, Trump rambled on and said: “You can ask me anything you want. You can talk sex!”
“We can ask about sex … ?” asked a nervous Stewart, facetiously pulling out a folder labeled “Epstein Files”.
“Honestly, his leering behavior is less ‘commander-in-chief at war’ and more ‘grandpa who’s lost his filter in public’,” he noted. “Instead of assuaging a nervous nation, he’s just embarrassing the whole family at dinner, going, ‘Hey, you see our waitress is a busty one!’”
“All we keep hearing from this administration is why the American people have to sacrifice for Trump’s vision of America’s greatness,” he concluded. “That these temporary disruptions are just part of the process. And why can’t we be patriots? We have to be patient. We have to suck it up. Whether it’s high gas prices or whimsical tariff inflation, or draconian ICE raids, or temporary Bill of Rights suspensions – it’s on us to understand. But Trump gets to be just the same ol’ ‘ain’t I a stinker?’ utterly self-absorbed ‘remember when I used to want to fuck hot girls?’ twat self.”
“Can you imagine any other president, let alone a wartime president, being this fucking indulgent?”
Stephen Colbert
And on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert recapped the third weekend of No Kings protests, which drew over 8 million people worldwide and was the largest single-day protest ever held in the US since the first Earth Day in 1970. Trump is “so unpopular”, Colbert added, that there was even a large No Kings march in London. “A No Kings march in London must have been awkward,” Colbert mused. “How does that make Charles feel?”
Colbert paid particular attention to the Minneapolis march, which included a giant inflatable Trump that appeared to be defecating on the constitution. “Spectacular craftsmanship,” the host said. “Above all else, whoever made that should be proud, because one day their grandchild will ask them how they resisted the rise of American fascism, and they can proudly say, ‘Well, Tyler, your grandma and I worked round the clock with a team of fellow patriots to answer the eternal question of democracy: can we make an angry balloon that looks like it’s pooping fire? Yes, you can.”
“One reason that so many people showed up to No Kings this weekend is that we are still at war with Iran – I think?” Colbert continued, “because Trump is sending mixed messages” by pursuing both a rapid-exit strategy while also mulling escalations that would dramatically raise the stakes. “Trying to follow the strategy of this president in this war is like getting relationship updates from your most chaotic friend – ‘Travis and I are either breaking up, or getting engaged this weekend. But one thing is for sure: we’re getting a dog!’”
Despite claiming that the war is won, Trump is reportedly threatening to send troops, giving the war an “erratic, make-it-up-as-you-go feel”, as the New York Times put it. “Yes, it is officially America’s first improv war,” Colbert quipped.
“There’s a reason Trump thinks of the war as a bunch of zooms and booms,” he added, because the president is reportedly receiving his daily briefing on the war in the form of a highlight reel of, as one person described it, “stuff blowing up”. The videos, prepped for him by the Pentagon, includes the biggest strikes on Iranian targets in the last 48 hours. “It’s a greatest hits of the Pentagon’s greatest hits,” Colbert quipped, “and it’s all compiled on the CD Now That’s What I Call A Military Operation: Because Legally Only Congress Can Declare War.”
