When Donald Trump chose to spend his weekend yelling at football players for peacefully protesting systemically racist violence instead of, say, taking care of the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, it was obvious that he’d be hearing from late night. And sure enough, on Monday, comedians including Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers ripped into the president—especially his apparently hypocritical stance when it comes to free speech.

Trump spent his weekend angrily tweeting about N.F.L. players who choose to take a knee during the national anthem; at a speech in Huntsville, Alabama, he said the N.F.L. should “get that son of a bitch off the field” if a player chooses to forego standing during the anthem. He went on to suggest firing or suspension.

“Just so we’re on the same page,” Noah said Monday night on The Daily Show, “when Nazis were protesting in Charlottesville, Trump said, ‘Some of these were very fine people’ . . . but then when black football players protest peacefully by taking a knee during the anthem, he calls them ‘sons of bitches’ who should be fired? Now, look, I don’t know if Trump is racist, but I do know he definitely prefers white people to black people. I can say that with confidence.”

As Noah notes, Colin Kaepernick first started kneeling during the anthem back when Barack Obama was still president. When a football player kneels, it’s not a protest against Trump, as some have suggested, but a specific protest against racially motivated violence, which remains pervasive in the United States. And no, it’s not a sign of disrespect against the country; besides, as Noah put it, Trump is hardly allowed to complain about such disrespect. “If they wanted to disrespect the country, they wouldn’t kneel silently,” Noah said. “They would do crazy things like insult Gold Star families, or make fun of P.O.W.s like John McCain, or say America is morally equivalent to Putin’s Russia. That’s the kind of shit they would do if they were trying to disrespect the country.”

As for the idea that these wealthy football players are “ungrateful,” Noah was similarly unmoved: “This idea that black people should be grateful is some sneaky-ass racism. Because when a white billionaire spends a year screaming that America is a disaster, he’s ‘in touch with the country’—but when a black man kneels quietly, he should be grateful for the successes that America has allowed him to have? How is that ungrateful?”

The entire ordeal recalls a question Noah has asked multiple times on his show: when and how is it appropriate for black people to protest? It’s a discussion he fiercely pursued back when Tomi Lahren sat down for an interview with him, and a question he says has still not gotten a good answer. As he concluded his monologue, Noah concocted a Dr. Seussian rhyme: “It’s wrong to do it in the streets; it’s wrong to do it in the tweets. You cannot do it on the field. You cannot do it if you’ve kneeled. And don’t do it if you’re rich, you ungrateful son of a bitch. Because there’s one thing that’s a fact: you cannot protest if you’re black.”

Seth Meyers dedicated an entire “Closer Look” segment to the controversy, noting that despite the fact that nuclear tensions are escalating with North Korea and 3 million Americans are currently without power in Puerto Rico, “President Trump decided what our nation needed most this past weekend was one more fucking thing for us to deal with.”