This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Late-night hosts picked apart an oddly sedate presidential address and awkward one-podium Democratic response.

Stephen Colbert

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert performed a close reading of Trump’s primetime address, in which he demanded $5.7bn for a border wall with Mexico that he claimed would be made of steel instead of concrete.

“Mr President, steel slats are not the metal bars we want you behind,” Colbert said to cheers from the audience.

Trevor Noah: Trump is 'the black light on American democracy' Read more

“Trump’s big network-interrupting Oval Office liar-side chat was his old immigration talking points with nothing new,” summarized Colbert. Also nothing new? The response by Democrats, who broadcast two “exciting, fresh young faces: congressional Democratic leaders and direct-to-DVD Addams Family Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi” from behind a podium in a hallway.

Colbert then returned to footage of Trump at his usual, combative self – sparring with reporters, claiming his wall is “medieval because it worked then, and it works even better now”.

“You really cannot go wrong with medieval technology,” Colbert admitted before assuming his mock-Trump voice. “The wall will be made of steel slats which top alchemists have assured me can be turned into pure gold – pays for itself. Now if you will excuse me, I have a leech’s appointment.”

In sum, he continued in the president’s voice, “not only can I do national emergency, many say I am national emergency.”

Trevor Noah

The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) Trump’s primetime address was only 10 minutes long, but jam-packed with sniffing and scaring the s**t out of people. pic.twitter.com/5AT2UdoMQg

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah noted that on Tuesday night, “all we got from Trump was basically another immigration stump speech. And not even like one of his fun ones, when he like jerks off an imaginary giant or whatever he’s doing,” he said over a clip of Trump awkwardly fist-pumping in the air.

Trump’s address “managed to pack in a lot of scaring the shit out of people about illegal immigrants”, said Noah, with fearmongering references to murder, blood, beheadings and dismemberment. It “doesn’t belong on network, it’s an HBO speech”, he added.

In the end, Noah lamented how Trump has reduced a complex, human issue – involving asylums seekers, visa overstays, Dreamers – into a “wall or no wall” debate, “like a caveman Congress”.

But “if there’s one thing we know, it’s that nothing will stop immigrants from trying to come to America,” Noah said. “This is a place that people dream of coming to, because people trying to make a better, safer life for their families will do anything to achieve that dream.

“And I know Donald Trump understands this,” Noah said, because of this mic drop: a video from Trump’s commencement speech at Wagner College in Staten Island in May 2004.

“Never, ever give up. Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen,” Trump told the graduates. “If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around it. But get to the other side.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers sounded a familiar refrain for the primetime address: “As usual, Trump found a way to make it weird.”

Also as usual, the address was full of falsehoods, including claims about the wall – the material, who’s paying for it, and “a price tag that seemed to change whenever he opened his mouth” – that have changed significantly from the campaign trail.

“He’s like a rich guy yelling from the Price is Right audience who doesn’t know how much things cost,” Meyers remarked following several clips in which Trump lists wildly different figures for the wall’s cost.

In short, Meyers summarized, “we’re in a self-inflicted political crisis right now because Trump made up something dumb, didn’t think it through and then backed himself in a corner.”