Late night comics have long been relentless in skewering Donald Trump. Now it’s Joe Biden’s turn

NEW YORK — Stephen Colbert took a sip from his glass before his first post-President Joe Biden monologue disastrous performance during his debate with Donald Trump. That would be difficult.

But then the CBS “Late Show” host dove right into jokes that were impossible for any political satirist to resist.

“I think Biden debates as well as Abraham Lincoln — if you dig him up now,” Colbert said this week.

He had company. Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon found nourishment in Biden’s staggering, slack-jawed performance and the Democrats’ performance. internal debate about whether the president should abandon his campaign for a second term.

Night comics have skewered Biden’s Republican opponent, Donald Trump, has been for years. Some didn’t hide that their feelings weren’t just professional: Colbert moderated a panel discussion between Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser in March, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel attended to court at a Biden event in Hollywood last month.

Yet to think they would have ignored Biden’s problems was naive, says Robert Thompson, a scholar of television and its history.

“The idea that late-night comedy has been another mouthpiece for the Democratic Party is simply not true, because comedy can’t afford to do that,” said Thompson, director of the University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. from Syracuse. “The job is to mock the people in power.”

Although Stewart hosted a live version of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central immediately after the June 27 debate, most of the comedic response came this week because of holiday schedules.

In his first monologue on Monday, Colbert made it clear that he believes Biden has been a great president. He referenced his appearance at the fundraiser, saying Biden looked “old but convincing” that night. When Colbert showed a news report saying Biden had told fellow Democrats he was fine, it was “just my brain,” the camera cut to a shot of the comedian lying face down on the floor.

“Who am I to recommend” what Biden should do? Colbert asked rhetorically. “I don’t know what’s going on in Joe Biden’s brain – something I apparently have in common with Joe Biden.”

He rejected the initial explanation that Biden had a “bad episode” during the debate. “When ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ made a musical, it was a bad episode,” he said. ‘It took a year off my life.’

Although Colbert pulled no punches, “it seemed to me like he was in some pain about having to do this,” said Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift” and writer of LateNighter. with.

The closest Colbert came to offering advice was when he said Biden seemed caught between two virtues — perseverance and self-sacrifice.

“Self-sacrifice requires a particular kind of courage,” he said. “This is a courage that I believe Joe Biden is capable of. I believe he is a good enough man. He is a good enough president to put the needs of the country ahead of the needs of his ego. And as painful as this may be, it is possible that handing over leadership to a younger generation is the right thing for the greater good.”

A heartfelt statement – with a twist at the end. The last word is a reference to a gaffe in Biden interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Kimmel, who has been the target of bitter attacks of Trump and immediately returned them, is off this summer. He did not opine on Biden on his X account.

“I imagine he’s happy to be on vacation,” Carter said.

There’s no doubt the change in tone is being appreciated by Trump, who has faced a “noise of mockery” on late-night television, Carter said. His fight with Kimmel and sour comments on “Saturday Night Live” are evidence of a thin skin. “SNL,” like Kimmel, is done for the summer.

Stewart criticized the way some Biden supporters complained that more attention should have been paid to things Trump said during the debate. He highlighted on “The Daily Show” that Trump has been criticized by comics “every night for 10 years.”

“We expected him to be crazy,” Stewart said. “But Biden’s performance and inability to articulate have at times been stunning. I couldn’t believe what I was watching.”

He said on his podcast, “The Weekly Show,” on Thursday that Biden’s team had been dishonest about the president’s condition. Previously on “The Daily Show,” he called for a more open conversation.

“Do you understand the opportunity here?” Stewart said. “Do you have any idea how hungry Americans are for any kind of inspiration or leadership and for a liberation from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy?”

On his NBC show, Meyers said that when he watched the debate, “I tried turning on the captions, but that only made things worse.” He also mocked Biden’s promise to rest more.

“Your plan to calm fears about his age is to go to bed earlier?” Meyers said. “Do you expect us to forget he’s 81 if you treat him like he’s 5 1/2?”

Late-night comics may not have the television ratings they used to, but they probably still have a disproportionate influence on public discourse, says Syracuse’s Thompson. In the case of Biden’s jokes, he says, they are “influential because that’s the last place you would expect to see them.”

Especially for a younger generation, what hosts say is often more likely to be experienced through video clips found online or shared on social media the next day. That was the case this week on “Morning Joe,” which repeated a Jimmy Fallon routine from the “Tonight” show that referenced an interview with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on “Morning Joe” the day before.

Fallon kept his jokes light, as he did Thursday night: “Biden,” he said, “hasn’t seen so many people abandon ship since he vacationed on the Titanic.”

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him on http://twitter.com/dbauder.