“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday after news leaked that Kim Jong Un’s regime has developed the ability to produce miniaturized nuclear warheads. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Late-night television hosts were not reassured by his remarks.
“Yeah, that oughta cool things down,” Seth Meyers said in his Late Night monologue. “God forbid Trump’s ever put in charge of a hostage situation.” Meyers imagined the president shouting into a bullhorn, “Kill a hostage? You don’t have the balls! Plus, if you do, I’ll kill everyone outside the bank!”
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From tonight’s #LNSM: Here’s @SethMeyers on the rapidly escalating tensions with North Korea. pic.twitter.com/yT6SIOSUoF
— Late Night (@LateNightSeth) August 8, 2017
Stephen Colbert was a bit more blunt on The Late Show: “I don’t want to be alarmist, but we’re all gonna die.”
“Thankfully, faced with the greatest challenge of his presidency, Donald Trump stepped up and in a moment of great statesmanship de-escalated the rhetoric and brought calm to our worried nation,” the host said, before adding, “I’m just kidding.”
After playing a clip of Trump’s comments, Colbert cowered in the corner of the screen and told the president, “Shut up! You’re gonna get us all killed! And I just started The Handmaid’s Tale.”
The Daily Show is on hiatus this week, but Trevor Noah’s Comedy Central colleague Jim Jefferies used his new show to assure Americans that we are only “on the verge” of nuclear war with North Korea. “You can still enjoy this weekend, and maybe even Monday and Tuesday,” he said.
Then, pointing to a photo of “Gangnam Style” singer Psy, Jefferies asked, “Why can’t you be more like him, North Korea? The only thing he wants to destroy is some pussy.”
Conan O’Brien, meanwhile, turned the terrifying situation into a joke about the president’s sex life. “Today, President Trump warned that if North Korea does not stop escalating its nuclear program, quote, ‘They’ll be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,’” he said at the top of his monologue. “Yeah. Then Melania said, don’t worry, he says that to me every night and nothing ever happens.”
And then there was Jimmy Kimmel, who opened his show with a doctored clip of Kim Jong Un and his cronies laughing it up over Trump’s incendiary statement.
“As you can see, the vacation is really relaxing him,” Kimmel said of the president in his monologue. “Listen, we’re sorry we made fun of you. Go back to golfing before you kill all of us!”
“It’s times like this I’m glad all our top scientists and engineers are working on Instagram filters,” Kimmel added. “Because CNN keeps showing this map that is making me very nervous. Basically, we’re one Trump toilet tweet away from being the United States of Florida.”
“Here’s the thing,” Kimmel concluded. “Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un both seem like reasonable men. I’m sure everything will work out fine.”
Later in the show, Kimmel sent one of his correspondents out on the street to see if random people walking along Hollywood Boulevard could locate North Korea on a map. Spoiler alert: They could not.
