Stephen Colbert is freaking out about the stock market—but he’s got an idea about who might be able to fix it.
In response to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, stocks lost about $3 trillion in market value Thursday. It was the largest one-day selloff since the COVID pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020.
“Now, one bit of good news coming out of all this,” Colbert said in his Thursday monologue, “It’s all pretty solid proof that there is no Deep State.”
He reasoned, “Because if there was, they would have stopped this s--t.”
The Dow Jones also plummeted 1,700 points, and economists on all sides seem skeptical that Trump’s strategy will be good for the country short or long-term.
That’s what’s made Colbert desperate enough to ask a big favor from an unlikely ally:
“If [the Deep State] do exist,” Colbert pleaded, “Maybe put a pause on your 5G-chip JFK Jr. adrenochrome-chemtrail orgy and jump in here, because we’re f---ing dying!”
Colbert wasn’t the only late-night host to respond to the day’s stock market chaos. In his recurring “Closer Look” segment, Seth Meyers also trashed Trump’s decision.
“It’s madness, it’s irrational,” Meyers said. “It’s mafia-style governance designed to bully the world into submission. It’s a self-inflicted economic crisis, and it’s worse than the worst-case scenario most experts feared.”
Meyers also jokingly checked out his 401k before panicking, yelling, “Oh no oh no, that’s a lot of red. Damn it, Donald!”
Michael Kosta at The Daily Show ripped into Trump for his recent Truth Social post trying to calm concerns about the economy.
“THE OPERATION IS OVER!” Trump wrote. ”THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE."
“Boy, I feel so much better now,” Kosta joked. “Always reassuring when the surgeon comes out screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘The patient is fine! Everything is going great!‘”
