It was a rough year for the late night comedy business. One show was cancelled, it was announced another will be cancelled next year, and another was suspended for spouting off about conspiracy theories related to Charlie Kirk’s assassin. Add all that to the regular program of liberal politicking, and you get the top (bottom?) ten moments from late night 2025.
10. Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Comedy Central, February 24 on Capitalism
“Look, capitalism is by definition exploitative. It's how it operates. That's fine. But then government's role should be to ease the negative effects on Americans of that exploitation, not subsidize that treachery with our money. We are getting [bleep] at a Diddy party and they're making us buy the baby oil!”
9. Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, CBS, November 5 on Zohran Mamdani
MAMDANI: New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant!
COLBERT: Is this true? Is this true? I'm being told just now that they’ve already changed the poem on the Statue of Liberty: "I'm not crying, you're crying."
“So, somebody in the administration got mugged, Big Balls. Remember Big Balls? He was part of DOGE, he's a teenager and he was mugged, carjacked, I think, by two other teenagers. Ironically, when they were kicking the shit out of him, he was curled up in a big ball. Not funny – it’s not funny that—well, you know, it's a little embarrassing to the bro squad out there who think of themselves as such tough guys because he got beat up by two 15—year—olds and one was a girl. They were brutal, they hijacked his car, and then they made fun of his playlist.”
7. Alan Cumming, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, July 21 on America
“America, how are you doing? No, really, how are you doing? I mean, how are you doing aside from being a country that has just reintroduced concentration camps, taken healthcare away from 17 million people to give billionaires a tax cut, and also to finance an armed militia of masked men that commits heinous assorted kidnapping and crimes against humanity on a daily basis? Aside from all that, are you okay? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
6. Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, CBS, June 24 on Operation Midnight Hammer
COLBERT: Okay, that's one less problem in the world. Except for one small problem: today we learned that U.S. intelligence has determined Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed, and their centrifuges are largely intact. Oopsa nukey. So, less Operation Midnight Hammer and more Operation MC Hammer. In that Iran's nuclear scientists just sent this message about their centrifuges.
MC HAMMER: Can't touch this
COLBERT: [Dances]
5. Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel Live, ABC, May 22 on The Big Beautiful Bill
“Well, it was another wildly destructive day in Washington, D.C. You know they pulled another all-nighter in the House last night where they passed Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill. And man, oh man, if this is the beautiful bill, I'd hate to see the ugly one. I'm not sure which part of the bill is the most beautiful. I don't know if it's the part where we take food from hungry kids or the devastating effect it will have on college education or the trillions of dollars it will add to our national debt or the almost $700 billion in cuts to Medicaid. Either way, say goodbye to grandma because the bill passed with a vote of 215-214, or as Trump called it, a landslide.”
4. Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, CBS, May 15 on The Big Beautiful Bill
“There's also gonna be cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or [snaps] Republicans have proposed limiting nutrition aid to only U.S. citizens and green card holders. Or, counterpoint, hear me out. What if we keep giving food to all the hungry children and to make up for that, Republicans can eat a [bleep]. How 'bout that? Will that work? Would that be okay? You know what? You know what? You know what? In fact, let's be generous, they can eat a bag of [bleep].”
3. John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, HBO, March 9 on Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump
“And I will admit there are positive things you can say about Reagan, like "He was our only president to make a movie with a chimp," or "He's dead," but his moral clarity might come as a surprise to any gay people who lived through the 1980s. I'm just saying, if you brought Reagan back from the dead and told him all the racist shit Trump's managed to do in less than two months, he'd cum so hard he'd die again.”
2. Taylor Tomlinson, After Midnight, CBS, March 6 on Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione
“It’s been a pretty bad week for the world, so I have a gift for you. My friends, there's a Luigi sex tape. That's right. Luigi Mangione is the accused murderer of a healthcare CEO, whose name was—he's not hot, so I don't remember.”
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
