Seth Meyers

Since Senator Bernie Sanders handily won the Democratic Nevada caucuses with 46.8% of the vote, “pundits across cable news have been freaking out about Bernie’s rise,” said Seth Meyers on Late Night. It’s an ongoing trend – looking back on Sanders’ popular vote wins in Iowa and the New Hampshire primary, “the story wasn’t that he was winning, but that if you use pundit math, he was actually losing,” said Meyers before turning to clips in which cable news pundits declared Amy Klobuchar’s third-place finish in New Hampshire or Pete Buttigieg’s close second in Iowa as the “real” story.

“That’s right, by winning states, Bernie is actually losing ground,” Meyers said of this logic. “You see, as all expert pundits know, you don’t want to win the first two – that’s a rookie mistake, where you come off as needy or as the kids would say, thirsty,” Meyers deadpanned. “You want to throw everyone off by losing a bunch of states, playing it cool, off to the side until someone finally says ‘who’s that fellow with zero delegates?’

“The reality is most actual voters don’t think like pundits – they don’t divide candidates into a so-called liberal lane and a moderate lane,” Meyers said. Voters like each candidate for their own reason, he argued. “They like Bernie for his consistency on issues like healthcare, they like Warren for taking on big fights against special interests like Wall Street, they like Biden for his eight years as Obama’s VP, they like Buttigieg for his youthful charm and charisma, they like Klobuchar for her record in the Senate, and they like Bloomberg because he pays people to like him.”

Bernie himself has bristled at his frontrunner status, although it should be noted, Meyers said, that “he does not care about status – he has one suit that he irons by running it over with his car, I guess; he shoots lay-ups with two hands, and he’s been photographed in the middle seat in coach – that is the only time he’s been centrist.”

But no one could deny his frontrunner status after his broad Nevada caucus victory, and Meyers called on pundits to listen up. “Regardless of how you feel about any particular candidate, if you’re a pundit, you might want to ask why so many voters are flocking to Bernie Sanders.”

Stephen Colbert

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert also tuned into Saturday’s Nevada caucus, in which Sanders won with a diverse coalition of, according to the New York Times, “immigrants, college students, Latina mothers, young black voters, white liberals and even some moderates”.

“And because it was Nevada,” Colbert added, “he also picked up votes from blackjack dealers, Cirque du Soleil, and that one guy sitting alone at the prime rib buffet muttering, ‘How am I going to tell Marjorie?’”

The contest was also a boost for Joe Biden, whose flagging campaign finished second. “We’re alive and we’re coming back and we’re gonna win,” he told supporters afterward.

It was a solid effort, but “bragging that you’re alive may not be the most stirring campaign rally,” said Colbert, donning Biden’s signature aviator glasses: “Folks, we’re breathing on our own, the tubes are out, the pants are on. This morning I had a whole thing of applesauce, now sponge-bathe me and roll me towards South Carolina.”

Meanwhile, Trump kicked off his first state visit to India on Monday with a stop at Mahatma Gandhi’s home, where he spun a replica of the wheel Gandhi used to make his own clothes. “That’s lovely – now he knows what it’s like to work in one of Ivanka’s factories,” said Colbert.

The Daily Show

Donald Trump pays a visit to India and proves that he can’t pronounce words in ANY language. pic.twitter.com/WoJPVktMlJ — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 25, 2020

On The Daily Show, Trevor Noah recapped Trump’s first day in India, where he received a hero’s welcome. “Trump is very popular in India,” Noah explained. “Some like him because of his anti-Muslim rhetoric, some like him because of his business savvy, and all of them like him because his skin looks like tikka masala.”

They pulled out all the stops, said Noah, referencing reports that workers built new roads, drained sewers and constructed a slum-masking wall in anticipation of Trump’s visit. “You know Trump’s gonna love that,” Noah said of the wall. “He’s just like ‘see, they built a wall, and I haven’t seen a single Mexican. It works, folks.’”

The preparations may seem extreme, “but this is basically what guys do whenever a girl says she’s coming over”, Noah said. “You make your bed, pick up your clothes, hide all your junk in the closet, then she calls and says she can’t make it and you’re like, ‘dammit, so I flushed the toilet for nothing?!’”

One thing that may not go over well? The vegetarian menu offered by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which reportedly has Trump staffers worried. “I honestly don’t know what’s stranger: the fact that Trump might eat vegetables, or that people are actually worried about how it will go,” Noah said, noting that some news outlets reported the story as: “yo if Donald Trump eats broccoli, he could die.”

Noah also addressed those critical of Trump’s butchering of some Hindi pronunciations. “To those Indians I say, please, don’t be mad – Trump may not be able to pronounce Hindi words, but he can’t pronounce English words either, so he’s an equal opportunity offender,” he said.