Late Night Last Week: Jessica Williams Returns to The Daily Show, Ronny Chieng’s Instagram Likes and More

By Will DiGravio  |  August 4, 2025 | 3:23pm
(Photos: Comedy Central, NBC, HBO)
TV Features The Daily Show
Late Night Last Week: Jessica Williams Returns to The Daily Show, Ronny Chieng’s Instagram Likes and More
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Each week,  ​Late Night Last Week highlights some of the best late night TV from the previous week. This week, we cover a new wave of reactions to Stephen Colbert’s cancellation, Josh Johnson’s superb first week behind the desk of The Daily Show, and Robert Klein’s 89th appearance on The Tonight Show. 

A long five weeks are about to begin. Today marks The Daily Show’s final break of the summer. The program will return on September 5, a move intellectually easy to understand, but emotionally less so. 

Last Monday, Jon Stewart and his team were at the top of their game. The host delivered a hilarious summary of the latest updates in the whole saga involving the MAGA world, Jeffrey Epstein, and the possible pardoning of Ghislaine Maxwell by the president. His monologue included a beautiful extended metaphor in which the Democrats were Wile E. Coyote, and Trump was the Road Runner. 

For so long, Stewart said, this has been the relationship. Yet now, with Trump’s talk of pardons,  it seems like the Coyote might finally win. In Stewart’s estimation, Trump now feels the pressure and is acting out of desperation. He played a news clip describing how Trump went on Truth Social and called for the prosecution of Beyonce, Oprah, and former Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“That’s right,” Stewart said. “Trump is now calling for the imprisonment of all the most popular people in the country, and Kamala Harris.” (ICYMI: Last week, Harris gave her first post-election interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.)

Just as Stewart was about to continue, a new voice appeared: live from ‘Scotland,’ former Daily Show correspondent (and Emmy-nominated performer) Jessica Williams, who was ready to defend Beyonce and rebuke Trump. 

“Trump is gonna target every exceptional black person he can think of. We’re about a week away from him saying that Urkel did 9/11,” Williams said. “He was nowhere near the towers that day!”

Stewart, whose banter with Williams is always among the show’s best, was quick to offer consolation. “Don’t be nervous, Jessica,” Stewart said. “Trump isn’t gonna come after you.” How dare he!

“I’m not an exceptional enough Black person for Trump? I’m not famous enough to be publicly accused of treason or doing 9/11?” Williams incredulously asked. “You don’t know where I was that day! You don’t know me!”


The Stewart-hosted episode then pivoted to a conversation with journalist Peter Beinart, author of the new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. Beyond the Epstein headlines, the other big news story of last (and this) week has been the world finally coming to terms with the ongoing starvation in Gaza, what experts and government officials are (again, finally) calling a genocide. 

Beinart and Stewart have a tremendous conversation, in which they discuss the ongoing violence, their relationships with Judaism, and the need to speak out. “I feel like a crazy person. I feel like I’m watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane and horrific,” Stewart said. Watch their full conversation. 

On the August 3 episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver also addressed the ongoing famine in Gaza. Oliver’s segment featured the appalling lies spread by politicians and members of the media to cover up this fact. What makes the situation so depraved, Oliver noted, is that it can be so easily solved. 

“Gaza is being starved by Israel. And what’s so frustrating is that most humanitarian disasters don’t come with solutions as straightforward as this one,” Oliver said. “Hurricanes don’t tend to have kill switches that you can flip.”

“But this famine truly does have an off button, as it’s entirely manmade,” Oliver said. “And we need to fucking press it.” 

(That part of his monologue is only available via HBO, so if you’re looking to watch some Oliver now, see his main monologue on deferred prosecution agreements below.)

Two Daily Show stars (one current, one former) are heading out on tour. Hasan Minhaj and Ronny Chieng are headlining the  “Hasan Hates Ronny/Ronny Hates Hasan” tour, mixing together their stand-up talents for many hatred-filled nights. Earlier last month, Chieng appeared on The Tonight Show to plug the tour. Last week, it was Minhaj’s turn. 

Minhaj used his time on the couch to address one of the great mysteries of our time: Chieng’s Instagram likes. If you, dear reader, follow Chieng on Instagram, you, just like your humble correspondent has, you will have surely noticed this phenomenon: he likes everything. Thankfully, Minhaj, or, as he described himself, “Comedy’s Edward Snowden,” was ready with the receipts. 

Plane crashes. Measles cases. Colbert fired. Halle Berry as Catwoman. Chieng likes it all. Mihaj urged viewers to go on to Chieng’s Wikipedia page and call him a “sadistic pervert.” Fallon objected before Minhaj said it was retaliation for Chieng calling him dumb. 

“Do you know where he got his law degree? Australia,” Minhaj observed. “It’s the Florida of countries.”

“They’re literally a penal colony. It is a jail island,” he added. “Ronny Chieng got his law degree from a lawless wasteland.” 

Finally, a bit of stand-up to end this week’s column. On August 31, Olivia Carter delivered a fantastic set on The Tonight Show. “One time I asked out my personal trainer,” she said to kick things off. “And he said, ‘Sorry I’m not attracted to you.’ And I was like, who’s fault is that?”

“Kind of feel like you should sleep with me or give me my money back,” she added. 

Carter then pivoted to life as a child in Kansas, including growing up with anxiety. “In the Midwest, they didn’t really have the dialogue for mental problems,” Carter said. “They were just kind of like, ‘She’s creative!’” Watch the full set below. 

 Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. 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.

 
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