Every week, Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late night TV from the previous week. In this week’s late night TV recap, Amber Ruffin talks about the White House Correspondents’ Association, John Oliver takes on the transphobic movement, Nels Cline plays Colbert, and more.
Tariffs, am I right?
On late night TV last week, the tariff jokes were dropping more than the stock market. John Oliver naturally opened the latest episode of Last Week Tonight with a bit about the tariffs, using them to pivot into his main story, which focused on the grotesque hate directed at transgender individuals, especially by those in power. He poked fun at Fox News, who was obsessed with a story on a transgender woman participating in a fencing competition, calling it “the story that everybody’s going to be interested in.”
“Are you sure about that?” Oliver asked. “The story about fencing and not the one that has caused the stock ticker in the corner of your screen to go bright red like an inflamed hemorrhoid?”
Oliver went on to deliver perhaps his greatest monologue of the season, focusing specifically on the subject of transgender athletes. He began the piece by demonstrating how many of the anecdotes surrounding anti-trans messaging in sports are mostly bullshit and often lack context and factual evidence. He then pivoted to discussing how the issue of transgender athletes has, in fact, merely become a rhetorical weapon as part of a larger effort to no longer acknowledge that transgender people exist.
He ended the monologue by making the point that so much of the discourse drowns out the fact that most of the trans kids who play sports are just average or below average athletes, looking to be a part of a team and find a sense of community. Oliver played clips of trans students talking about what sports mean to them, and also clips of their teammates defending their right to play.
“If you’re experiencing a weird sensation after that clip that you can’t quite place, it was because it was nice,” Oliver said. “It was happy kids talking about how they’re able to be themselves. And you don’t usually get nice things on this show, which at this point is honestly mainly dense statistics, sad facts, and occasional Pikachu porn.’”
One of the big stories going into late night last week was the White House Correspondents Association’s decision to drop Late Night writer and performer Amber Ruffin as the host of this year’s WHCA dinner. The upshot: the organizers said that Ruffin had to make fun of both sides equally. Ruffin, rightly, pointed out how that makes absolutely no sense. They disinvited her.
Thus, we all wondered, what would Ruffin do in response?
On Monday, March 31, we got our answer. Ruffin joined Seth Meyers on the couch to not only mock the situation, but to use it to expose further the hypocrisy and senselessness of the mainstream press’ obsession with “both sides.”
“Amber Ruffin knows that when bad people do bad things, you have to treat them fairly and respectfully,” Ruffin said, looking right into the camera. “When you watch The Sound of Music, you have to root for the singing children and the other people.”
Meyers did a fantastic job playing the straight man, setting up Ruffin to deliver some devastating one liners.
Meyers: “The whole reason we have a free press is so we can report stories, you know, as they actually happened.”
Ruffin: “No, we have a free press so we can be nice to Republicans at fancy dinners. That’s what it says in the First Amendment.”
The segment closed on a positive note. Ruffin admitted that perhaps it was for the best that she was disinvited. “I would have been so terrifically mean,” she said. Here’s hoping we still get to hear those jokes sometime down the line.
On Tuesday, April 1, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Louis Cato and The Late Show Band were joined by the great guitarist and composer Nels Cline. Known best as the guitarist for Wilco, Cline was a member of the Geraldine Fibbers and has played as a sideman for Mike Watt, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Thurston Moore, and countless others. He’s also a prolific solo artist and band leader, who’s released 44 albums under his own name. He joined The Late Show Band to perform “The 23,” a track from his new album, Consentrik Quartet.
Consentrik Quartet features Cline, Ingrid Laubrock on saxophones, Chris Lightcap on bass, and Tom Rainey on drums. The album marks his fourth from Blue Note Records. Watch and listen to Cline give a fantastic solo performance here as part of the Late Show’s online “Commercial Breakdown” segment.”
Pivoting back to the news, the other big event last week was Senator Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech in the United States Senate. Surpassing the racist Strom Thurmond’s 1957 filibuster of the Civil Rights Act, Booker stood for more than 25 hours on the Senate floor. Guest commentator Charlamagne Tha God joined The Daily Show to provide his thoughts on Booker’s efforts. “This is unbelievable! A Democrat actually doing something!” he said. “That’s the longest someone’s kept Congress captive since January 6th.”
After celebrating Booker, Charlamagne took the Democrats to task for their months of inaction and their low approval ratings. He called for Democratic leadership to face primary challenges, calling out Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, and mocking Gavin Newsom for starting a podcast where he’s hosted various MAGA guests. “Gavin just feels phony,” he said. “It feels less like you’re gonna lead a revolution and more like you’re gonna sell me pills for natural male enhancement.”
Finally, we end our weekly late night TV recap with a lovely moment that did not occur last week, but was posted to YouTube last week. The great comedian and Daily Show correspondent Ronny Chieng recently became an American citizen. To celebrate, he got a surprise hug and kiss during a commercial break from a fellow by the name of Bill Murray, who had just finished interviewing.
“Worst interview ever. Just wouldn’t leave,” Chieng said, smirking.
Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He’s been writing Paste’s late night TV recaps since 2024. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.
