Late Night Hosts Help America Process Joe Biden’s Post-Debate Fallout

The presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump came at a bad time for late night. Most hosts were off getting an early start to the Fourth of July as the nation let out a collective scream. Thankfully, Jon Stewart was not one of those watching from the Hamptons or wherever rich people go. Instead, he went live on Comedy Central to help us process before heading off on a vacation.

The Monday host of The Daily Show returned swinging last night, walking us through all that has happened, or, rather, not happened since debate night. There are two camps on the center-left right now, Stewart says: those who think Biden has trouble expressing thoughts, and those who think “those people should shut the fuck up.” The latter camp is doing something commonly referred to as gaslighting. Or, as Stewart said with a wave of the hand, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” 

In his monologue, Stewart takes us back to 2022, showing clips of Biden (and not in the deceptively edited way the right always does) that prove what we saw in the debate was not some kind of one-off occurrence that his most loyal defenders say we cannot even question. Stewart’s monologue gets at what is so offensive about the Biden conversation: it is not that the president has defenders, it’s that those defenders are so aggressively dismissive of those who, in Stewart words, are not so easily willing to accept “blatant bullshit.”

Stephen Colbert Puts on Kid Gloves 

No matter where you stand on the drop out issue, Biden is still the incumbent president of the United States who, uh, ya know, wields a lot of power. So it was especially weird to watch Stephen Colbert, who once roasted George W. Bush to his face in one of the greatest live comedy performances of this century, preface his monologue with gushing praise for Biden. Biden is a great man, president, leader, etc., Colbert insisted in a tone that was a bit too Dear-Leader-ish. 

“Before we get to the jokes — and they are jokes — I want to be clear from the very beginning [on] what I think about Joe Biden,” Colbert said, before playing a monologue of talking heads kissing up to Biden. “Yes,” Colbert said, clapping his hands to get the crowd going, “he’s a great president.” To which I ask …. really? I don’t mean to engage in a kind of both-sides-ism, but have we reached the point where comics now have to pump up people in power before taking them down? 

Colbert goes on to deliver a strong monologue, full of observations about the obvious and horrifying realities of this mess of a presidential election, including, of course, Trump’s own monstrosity. But the deference to power at the outset cheapened the rest of the monologue. Let’s ditch the pleasantries, please. Or at least save it for the couch.