Dad Energy, Ketchup, and Size Jokes: Late Night Covers DNC Day 3

On the first day of the convention, Pritzker took a tour of Chicago bars with Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show. Last night, Klepper was in the host’s chair, recapping the party-like atmosphere of the previous day’s roll call, during which the rapper Lil Jon introduced the state of Georgia. Klepper wondered what it might be like for a child explaining Lil Jon’s music to their mother: “He’s a rapper, Mom. You know, that musical genre invented by Lin-Manuel Miranda.” 

Turning back to our theme of Dad Energy, Klepper also analyzed some of the previous evening’s speeches, including that by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who shared his story of leaving an awkward voicemail asking out the future-Vice President Kamala Harris on a first date. “Has there ever been a guy more named Doug in history?” Klepper asked. “If your name’s Doug, this is who you are.” Klepper then said we can’t expect too much from Doug. After all, he said, political spouses don’t often rile up a crowd. Then he cut to footage of Michelle Obama. “Oh, that’s not a Doug,” he said. “Not an ounce of Doug on it.” 

Klepper then made reference to the “Dick Joke Heard Round The Bean,” the reference to Donald Trump’s obsession with crowd size made by Barack Obama, complete with hand gestures, in his speech. “That’s the second time this summer the Secret Service has failed to protect Trump from a lethal attack,” Klepper said. The show then turned to Correspondent Ronny Chieng for an update from the convention floor on DNC messaging. “The dick jokes are a major attack line,” Chieng said, “and they’re only going to get bigger.”

Meanwhile, the other late night shows continued with business as usual, mixing in some DNC jokes into their monologues. Seth Meyers noted that the club vibes of the roll call did indeed mark an energy shift for the Democrats. “The music for Biden was just gonna be the ‘Game Over’ noise from Mario Brothers,” he said. Filling in for Jimmy Kimmel this week, RuPaul similarly joked about the roll call: “They don’t call it a political party for nothing.” 

On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon began his monologue talking about the speeches by the Obamas. “There was so much electricity in the arena,” Fallon said, “the whole crowd looked like Bernie Sanders.”