Late-night hosts attempted to translate the president’s comments at the border as the government shutdown stretches on

Late-night hosts translated Donald Trump’s words, wheels and walls at the southern border.

Trevor Noah

Thursday marked the 20th day of the government shutdown, and the US government is “so broke that they have to start renting out the Lincoln Memorial to Airbnb”, joked Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. But while more than 800,000 federal workers remain without pay – a point The Daily Show illustrated with a sketch about a free-for-all TSA check-in – the president was philosophizing about wheels and walls in Texas.

The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) It’s funny how whenever Trump needs a win, a big scary caravan begins its journey to kill us all. pic.twitter.com/mUHWpLuYbP

“The wheel is older than the wall, you know that?” Trump told press near the southern border. “There are some things that work. You now that? A wheel works, and a wall works.”

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Noah didn’t miss a beat. “You know, if a football player got up after a tackle and started talking like that,” he joked, “the trainer would be like: ‘Uh, we need to get you to the locker room now. Your brain is not OK.’”

To clarify, Noah continued: “Walls are actually much older than the wheel. Six thousand years older than the wheel. So I guess people should stop calling Trump a Neanderthal because a Neanderthal would know that.”

More seriously, Noah said, Trump appears to be invoking another caravan-as-fear tactic to distract from what could become the country’s longest government shutdown on Saturday.

“Wow, another caravan,” Noah remarked. “It’s so convenient how whenever Trump needs to win something, a big, scary caravan is always coming to kill us all.”

Stephen Colbert

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert also acted as a translator for Trump’s trip to the southern border yesterday, in which he visited border patrol agents while his “mouth continued to do words”.

Trump suggested that he would declare a national emergency to authorize $5.7bn in wall funding without congressional approval, but stopped short of committing to it. In other words: “I may probably, definitely, certainly, for sure, though perhaps not” declare a national emergency, said Colbert.

That’s just how emergencies are, Colbert said – “you never know if they’re urgent or not”.

Trump’s answer may well have translated to: “Hello, 911? Can you send a fire truck right away? My house might be on fire. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. But if you are sending a truck, please bring a pizza,” joked Colbert.

Back at the border, Trump asserted to reporters that, according to his lawyers, declaring a national emergency for his political fight was legal. “Mr President, if you want to know what is or is not legal, I don’t know if I’d ask your lawyers,” Colbert advised. “One of them is unreachable for the next three years.”

Trump also expressed discontent with the youngest class of congressmen this year, who he called “crazy”.

Colbert’s translation was a bit more detailed. “These young people have gone crazy,” he said in mock Trump voice. “They’re ’gramming their brunches, they’re fidgeting their spinners, they’re avocado-ing their toast. Dancing should be illegal. They’re all crazy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to smearing my face with tanning cream and screaming about the people who are coming over the border to live in our lake houses.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers addressed the government shutdown plainly. “The reality is that Trump is subjecting millions of people to unnecessary pain and suffering to get his wall and hoping Democrats will blink first,” Meyers said. “Reporters asked him if he could empathize with people who are right now literally having to choose between food and medicine, and he insisted that he could.”

Meyers referred to a clip in which Trump told a reporter that unpaid federal employees will find a way to make things work – they always do – and that “many of those people that won’t be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100% with what I’m doing”, said Trump.

“I don’t know, it’s hard to imagine someone sitting at their kitchen table choosing between food and insulin saying: ‘I’m just glad Trump is getting his wall, now off to take a dump in the park,’” mused Meyers, referencing the human waste now gathering in unstaffed national parks.

Acknowledging Trump’s visit to the border on Thursday, Meyers claimed: “All he has is his delusions, and those delusions keep getting weirder and weirder.”

One of those delusions is Trump’s false claim that other living presidents had expressed regret to him for not building a wall.

“Now that’s an obvious lie, and every living president has denied it,” Meyers said. “But here’s what’s so weird to me: why didn’t he just pick a president who was dead? It would’ve been so much easier to get away with.”