Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert took to their respective late-night shows live on Tuesday to share their thoughts following the first, and perhaps only, Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump presidential debate of 2024.
The Democratic and Republican candidates faced off at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for the 90-minute debate moderated by ABC News’ Linsey Davis and David Muir. While it started with a handshake, the gloves quickly came off with each presidential nominee taking stabs at one another over their respective policies, campaigns and beliefs. They also each touched on hot-button topics from abortion and immigration to the economy, the Hamas-Israel war and more.
After the debate, The Daily Show and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert aired live shows to digest the events, and zero in on some of the more outlandish statements from Trump. On the Daily Show, host Jon Stewart began by quipping that neither Trump nor Harris’ really answered any questions, returning to the time-honored “American tradition” of evasion and “baseless ad hominems.”
Stewart put focus on the abortion section of the debate, and played a clip of Trump proudly proclaiming during the debate, without evidence, that “everybody” wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Stewart then replayed Harris’ response to Trump: “I have talked with women around our country. You wanna talk about, this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the healthcare providers are afraid they might go to jail — and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that.”
“Holy shit! She crushed that,” Stewart said, marvelling at Harris’ answer.
Stewart also dinged Trump for once again obsessing about his crowd sizes, and spent time mocking the former president’s inane and false ramblings about illegal immigrants eating people’s pets.
After picking the low-hanging fruit of Trump’s bizarre rantings, Stewart turned serious towards the end of the segment, especially as Trump tried to weasel out of his responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection during the debate and blamed Nancy Pelosi.
“One thing will always be true — and it is the quality of the former president I respect the least. Whenever he is cornered and forced to face even the smallest of consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he reverts to the greatest refuge of scoundrels,” Stewart said, the anger rising in his voice.
He continued, “This man, who constantly professes to be your champion, who says they’re going to have to go through him to get to you, will always, when the boat is going down, be the first into the lifeboats. Because in that moment, he will always say the same thing: ‘I didn’t know anything about it, I was just told to show up for a cruise.’ Even though, everybody knows, he was the fucking captain of the ship.
“In any other country, that lack of accountability would be disqualifying,” Stewart concluded.
Over at the live taping of The Late Show, Colbert opened his review of the debate by saying that Harris “came out swinging” and was eager to “rattle Trump’s cage.”
“And now that it is over, they are still looking for pieces of his cage in low orbit,” Colbert quipped.
Warming to the theme, Colbert joked that “Harris got under [Trump’s] skin like she was stuffing in butter and rosemary. It was beautiful. By the end of the debate, the meat was falling off the bone.”
Colbert highlighted Trump’s tendency to ramble incoherently. “He was so nonsensical that she looked at him the way a parent looks at a kid giving a presentation on why they should be allowed to get a pet tiger,” Colbert said.
Jimmy Fallon also opened his Tonight Show monologue with a few comments on the debate: “Tonight was the first time Harris and Trump ever met… that’s why Trump prepared for the debate by watching this season of Love Is Blind.”
“Harris tried to cast Trump as a ‘relic’ of the past, while Trump thinks relic is a condiment he puts on his hot dogs,” the host quipped before adding in his best Trump voice, “Extra ketchup and extra relic. I love relic. Some people don’t like relic but I like…”
Fallon also noted how there wasn’t a live audience for the debate, saying, “They were speaking to a totally silent, empty room. Or, as J. D. Vance calls that: a rally.”
Tuesday night’s debate came more than two months after Trump and President Joe Biden faced off for a June 27 debate, which left many concerned by Biden’s shaky and stumbling performance. That night ultimately led to calls across the Democratic Party for Biden to step down from the presidential race. On July 21, the president decided to halt his re-election campaign and endorse Harris to take his place at the top of the ticket.