Kimmel, Colbert, Meyers on Trump Inauguration: ‘Ominous and Weird’

“President McRib is back for a limited time: only four years,” said Jimmy Kimmel during his post-inauguration day Jimmy Kimmel Live! show on Monday night.

“Today at noon Eastern, our long, national nightmare was officially sworn in another time, a second time,” Kimmel continued. “Donald Trump became the first convicted felon to be sworn in as President of the United States today. He’s selling inauguration bibles to celebrate, he launched a new meme coin over the weekend to the tune of some say $41 billion dollars — he launched his own crypto currency days before he became president. I hope we all understand how crazy that is; the president of the United States, following in the footsteps of the Hawk Tuah Girl.”

When reacting to Trump‘s inauguration day of events, the ABC late-night host began his monologue by quipping about the ceremony being moved indoors due to the cold (“harder for Melania to escape”), before moving onto First Lady Melania Trump’s outfit (a “goth Al Capone” and “we found Carmen Sandiego“), to Donald and Melania’s “almost” kiss (“I guess he didn’t want to mess up his makeup”).

Kimmel pointed out that, unlike Trump’s first inauguration, respect was paid to tradition when it came to the peaceful exchange of power from the outgoing Biden administration to that of the incoming President Trump. However, “Kamala Harris invited J.D. Vance to the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory for a ceremonial humping of the Millard Fillmore futon,” he cracked about Vance.

The late-night host went over who was in attendance — from Trump’s family to former Vice President Mike Pence and the much-talked about Big Tech billionaires who were seated in the second row during the first address, in front of Trump’s cabinet members, state governors and public servants. Many of the invited CEOs had donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund; in attendance were Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been assigned to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency, along with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Kimmel said there’s a “perfectly good explanation” why they were in attendance: “Trump is selling the country to the highest bidder. It really has been amazing to watch these powerful men, who don’t need to ever make another dollar in their lives, debasing themselves to suck up to this ridiculous person, but that’s why they’re billionaires, I guess.”

He then showed a clip of Trump during his speech vowing to put a flag on Mars and Musk’s emphatic thumbs-up reaction: “Elon needs a change of pants… another rocket just exploded on launch!” joked Kimmel, calling Musk “a real-life comic book villain” and adding that “One day, Elon Musk can be the biggest dork on two planets.”

With Trump planning to come to Los Angeles on Friday to survey the damage from the wildfires, Kimmel showed a clip of Trump addressing California’s fire response during his speech. Trump said the fires were combatted “without a token of defense” and that some of the tech CEOs in attendance had lost their homes. (“That’s interesting,” Trump said.) To that, Kimmel, who has shared his first-hand take on the fire devastation, said of Trump, “He always knows just what to say. By the way, none of the wealthy and powerful individuals in that room don’t have a home any longer. They all have homes. They have lots of homes. Jeff Bezos is not living at his mother in law’s right now.”

As Kimmel continued, he took jabs at Trump’s second, off-script address to the overflow crowd in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, as well as Carrie Underwood’s performance of “America the Beautiful,” which was hit with tech difficulties. He also pointed out how the crowd was “wall-to-wall white people” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“It happened,” Stephen Colbert announced on his Monday night The Late Show. “Donald Trump is president again.”

Based on the negative reaction from the crowd, the CBS late-night host acknowledged that unpleasant feelings abound. “If you don’t like the jokes tonight, it’s not our fault — the jokes wrote them. Where do you begin? Off we go, first of all. How do you make sense of today? How did we get here?”

He concluded that today, “the remembering begins,” as he launched into mocking Trump for moving his inauguration ceremony inside (“You weather cuck!”) and noted the viral comparisons made online to Melania Trump’s outfit (“Now we know why the brim is so big,” he said of her hat and Trump’s air kiss).

“Trump’s inauguration crowd can now officially be called the smallest of all time,” Colbert said, noting the 700-person capacity attendance inside the Capitol Rotunda.

Colbert also took issue with Trump’s eyebrow-raising comments on the L.A. wildfires — “That’s an interesting way to express condolences,” he said — and offered a handful of Trump impressions suggesting other things that the President could rename, following Trump’s pledges to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico and restore the name of Mount McKinley.

“Today represents a turning page for all Americans,” Colbert then mustered up. “Whether you supported Trump or not, no matter how much we think we know what’s going to happen for the next four years, we don’t know. We have to look at the president with fresh eyes and let go of all the things he did during his first term and look to the future… right Mr. President?”

But, he then changed his mind when playing an inauguration clip of Trump again falsely claiming the 2020 election was rigged: “Fuck it! He told us to inject bleach and I still believe there’s a pee-pee tape, Russia, if you’re listening, let the Golden age begin!”

Colbert said he needed a second monologue to cover more of Trump’s latest moves, including his appointment of Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as Hollywood’s “special ambassadors” (“That can not feel good for other aging Hollywood right-wing actors”), Snoop Dogg’s “betrizzle” by performing at Crypto Ball ahead of inauguration and the launch of Trump’s personal meme coin.

Guesting on Colbert’s show was Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor, who talked about the numerous executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in office and offered their advice on how to survive a second Trump presidency.

Seth Meyers, during his “Closer Look” segment, opened NBC’s Late Night show by saying, “There’s no avoiding it. We all know what the big story is today so we might as well dive right back in… TikTok is back, baby!” He then diverted to several other news stories before turning to Trump’s appointment: “Fuck me!”

Meyers also took aim at Trump’s inauguration move inside, which left his supporters out in the cold (“So ironic: when Trump was leaving office they walked right into the Capitol; now he’s back and they’re shit out of luck”); said the next four years will mostly be Meyers showing clips and shrugging; and summed up the substance of Trump’s inauguration speech as an “unsettling low-energy mix of ominous fascism and weird shit that no one except Donald Trump and his minions even care about.”

Meyers continued to show clips from Trump’s address. “In one speech, he managed to lay out a chilling vision of an authoritarian regime that will invoke an 18th century law to conduct mass deportations, accelerate climate change and criminalize trans people, while also claiming he’ll change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America — which he cannot do! Like, everyone else in the world is still going to call it the Gulf of Mexico, they have maps, too!”

He said Trump’s announcement to sign an executive order to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America… never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents” resonated with him personally. Meyers wiped his brow: “Phew! I’ll admit, I was worried about this show for a hot second! But now, knowing that you’re a man of your word, full steam ahead!”

Concluding that Trump’s “ominous and weird” inauguration message was clear that he will “put the interest of wealthy oligarchs before Americans,” Meyers concluded, “This isn’t going to be like Trump’s first term, it’s going to be worse.”

Meanwhile, for his weekly Daily Show visit, host Jon Stewart gave his take on the “historic vibe shift” of Trump’s second inauguration Monday night, where he mocked the tech billionaires in attendance, President Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons of his family, Elon Musk’s controversial crowd salute and, of course, Trump’s speech.

Concluded Stewart: “The take away of this entire day was a man who tried to overthrow the government has been peacefully handed the reins of power, and the outgoing president has started a new tradition of blanket pardoning everyone in his orbit. The two men created a magnificent snake sucking its own dick, a cycle of no accountability.”