Late-night hosts discuss Trump’s threatening and odd comments on the government shutdown, Fox News and Ghislaine Maxwell

Late-night hosts discuss Donald Trump’s unhelpful comments on the ongoing government shutdown, Ghislaine Maxwell and Fox News being too “politically correct”.

Jimmy Kimmel

Jimmy Kimmel continued to keep tabs on the government shutdown on Tuesday evening, as essential workers such as air traffic controllers were still required to work without pay. “Meanwhile Congress, the people who actually shut the government down, are getting paid in full,” he said. “Don’t even try to make sense of it. The logic doesn’t fly, and I would recommend that you don’t either, at least for quite awhile.”

Asked earlier this week if furloughed employees would receive retroactive compensation once the shutdown is over, as required by law, Trump demurred: “It really depends on who you’re talking about. But for the most part, we’re going to take care of our people. There are some people who really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

“Why does he always sound like the dumbest member of the crime family?” Kimmel joked.

Kimmel reminded viewers that the Democrats were holding out on signing the Republican budget bill because it would cause millions of Americans to lose their healthcare. “Republicans deny this,” he explained. “They say it won’t hurt anyone at all. And if you had any doubt that they were lying before, consider this shocking post from the gentlewoman from Georgia.”

That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rightwing conspiracist and frequent Kimmel target who posted on X that though she was not a fan of Obamacare, she was breaking rank with Republicans and opposing a bill that would double her own adult child’s healthcare premiums. “No I’m not towing the party line on this, or playing loyalty games,” she wrote.

“I know this sounds crazy, but I will say it for the second time in a month: Marjorie Taylor Greene is right,” said Kimmel, though he also added: “I need something to wash out my mouth.”

On the Daily Show, guest host Josh Johnson mocked Trump for botching any semblance of chill when it came to Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Asked if he would consider pardoning Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker, Trump claimed that he hadn’t heard her name “for such a long time”.

Johnson disputed this. “People say 2025 didn’t have a summer song of the year, but no! The song of the summer was the reporters asking Ghislaine Maxwell,” he said. “If it was eligible, it would’ve been number one on Billboard.”

Trump also said he would “speak to the DA” about a potential pardon. When reminded by a reporter that she was convicted of child sex trafficking, Trump responded: “I’m going to have to take a look at it.”

“Hey man, maybe when you hear the words ‘child sex trafficking’, the next thing you say shouldn’t be ‘I’m going to look at it,’ alright?” Johnson said. “The only way to phrase that worse is to say ‘Now, I gotta see this!’”

Not helping his case, Trump brought up that Sean “Diddy” Combs, whom Trump referred to by his old moniker “Puff Daddy”, also asked for a pardon.

“Wait, so you don’t remember Ghislaine, but you remember that we used to call Diddy Puff Daddy?” Johnson marveled. “That was nine names ago!”

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers noted that the Nobel prize winners are expected to be announced this week. “Oh, that’s going to put him in a good mood,” he deadpanned, referring to Trump’s public desire to win the peace prize. “Better batten down the hatches, Portland.”

“Look, I know he doesn’t deserve it, but can we please just give it to him?” he joked. “It’s all he wants, and I honestly think he’ll spend the rest of his life admiring it in the mirror and we’ll just never see him again.”

In other news, Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week that Republicans are displeased with his former favorite network Fox News for trying to be too “politically correct”.

“Yeah, that’s Fox News’s problem,” said Meyers. “Too politically correct? The original name for Fox & Friends was Three Dudes & a Broad.”

In his rambling post, Trump added that his administration needed to fix media bias against Republican politicians. “Dude, how many times do you have to win before you stop complaining?” Meyers wondered. “This is like if the ’92 dream team complained about the refs.”

In a separate post on Truth Social, Trump criticized NBC, and said the FCC should “look into” the network’s broadcasting license. “Yeah, apparently they once let a guy with six corporate bankruptcies give business advice,” Meyers joked next to a photo of Trump’s NBC show The Apprentice.