Late-night stars Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert opened their shows on Monday night with somber monologues about the failed attempt to kill Donald Trump on Saturday. Jimmy Fallon, on the other hand, didn’t talk about it.
Meyers started his speech by saying that he would soon be telling jokes, but first, he wanted to think “for a bit about the horrifying scenes we saw in Pennsylvania on Saturday and this tense moment in American history.
” I agree with what many others have said: all kinds of political violence must be rejected. It’s wrong in every way and bad for democracy. We should all speak out against it and do everything we can to stop it.
Meyers then said that Trump’s choice for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, “chose to make things worse” at a very bad time.
“After a tragedy like this, there are often calls to stay out of politics,” Meyers started. I think it’s more important than ever for people to talk about their ideas and settle disagreements without violence. Now is the time to recommit to a politics based on kindness, empathy, and community for everyone.
Vance blamed President Biden in a post on X on Saturday night, less than three hours after Trump almost died at a campaign gathering in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“Today isn’t just one of those days,” Vance wrote. “The Biden campaign is based on the idea that President Trump is a fascist dictator who must be stopped at all costs.” That speech directly led to the attempt to kill President Trump.
Today is not just some isolated incident.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) July 14, 2024
The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.
She said that the now-nominated GOP vice presidential candidate “chose to inflame the national mood at a dangerous time rather than show the leadership and basic decency it would take to calm things down.”
“Encouraging democracy and peaceful persuasion is not the same thing as calling for violence,” he said. We need more of it, not less of it.
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Meyers said, “Accurately warning about the dangers of autocracy and attempts to destroy our democracy has nothing to do with political violence.” “It is not only our democratic right, but also our civic duty, to talk openly about the threat of authoritarianism.” We all need to keep doing it. That’s what this show will keep doing.
No one was in the studio when Colbert started his show; it was a pre-recorded “cold open.”
He said, “When I saw this on Saturday, my first thoughts were horror at what was happening, relief that Donald Trump was still alive, and, frankly, grief for my beautiful country.” “Then we heard more horrible news: people at the rally had also been shot, and one of them had died.”
“How many times do we need to learn that violence has no place in our politics?” he asked. “The whole point of democracy is to settle our differences with a ballot, not a bullet.”
Colbert went on, “Violence is not only bad, it serves no purpose.” As I said, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot. Any plans are useless when there is violence or even calls for violence.
Anthony Anderson was Jimmy Kimmel’s guest host on Live! on ABC. He started the show with a joke: “All weekend, I kept thinking, ‘I wonder what Jimmy Kimmel’s gonna say about this on Monday and Tuesday.'” Then I thought, “Oh crap!” “On Monday, I’m Jimmy Kimmel.”
“In all seriousness,” he said, “I want to say that our thoughts are with the families of the victims. Hopefully, this will be a time when we can all take a break from the hate and vitriol in politics and just chill the f**k out.”
Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show on NBC, didn’t talk about the shooting in his opening. He also didn’t talk about politics, except to talk about Trump’s choice for vice president, J.D. Vance.
