Seth Meyers on Republicans: ‘I’ve seen more organized groups of seagulls fighting over a potato chip’

Seth Meyers

Late-night hosts recapped continued chaos in the US House of Representatives, as the Republican majority still flails in its search for a new speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy two weeks ago.

Seth Meyers compared the Republican leadership dysfunction to the Democratic leadership of Joe Biden in the White House, Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House. “Say what you will about them, and there is plenty to criticize, but at least their status as leaders is stable,” the Late Night host said. Meanwhile, the GOP has likely presidential candidate Donald Trump, “whose top four suggested Uber destinations are courthouses”, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, “who can often be found buffering”, and no speaker of the House.

“I would call House Republicans a clusterfuck, but a cluster implies some sense of unity,” he said. “They’re more like a scatter-fuck. I’ve seen more organized groups of seagulls fighting over a potato chip.”

Related: Seth Meyers on George Santos: ‘Like a telemarketer scam your grandpa would fall for’

“Usually a political party trying to gain power in a democracy wants to project competence, even if they have to lie,” he added. “But Republicans are so mad at each other, they’re just going on TV every damn day telling the American people, ‘We suck.’”

Meyers pointed to an interview with the Republican congressman Don Bacon, who criticized the far-right faction of his own party who voted to remove McCarthy. “These guys want to be in the minority. I think they would prefer that, because they could just vote no and yell and scream all the time,” said Bacon.

“That’s the whole party in a nutshell,” Meyers said. “They were literally the parents screaming at the umpire through the chain-link fence drunk on Thermos wine at 8.30am on a Saturday. But now they’re the umpires, and it’s a lot harder to be the umpire.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Riven with factions and unable to elect a new speaker of the House, Republicans are “in a tough spot”, said Jimmy Kimmel from Los Angeles. “Either they cave to the extremists in their party who want to impeach Joe Biden and hand Ukraine over to Putin, or they work with the Democrats who want to fight climate change and give sick people healthcare. So it’s a no-win situation, really.”

The disorder reminded Kimmel of a new slogan from Trump – “Republicans eat their young,” he said in a new campaign video. “The only reason he didn’t eat Eric is that he was a Democrat back then,” Kimmel joked.

In other Trump news, a federal judge issued a partial gag order in the case related to January 6, which prevents him from publicly targeting prosecutors, judge’s staff or possible witnesses. “Aren’t we all possible witnesses?” Kimmel wondered. “I don’t know about you, but I saw the whole thing happen.”

The gag order has not stopped Trump from blustering along the campaign trail. At a speech in Iowa, he claimed: “What they don’t understand is that I am willing to go to jail, if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again.”

“Oh yeah, we understand that,” Kimmel responded. “That actually is the plan: you go to jail, and the country becomes a democracy again.”

Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert hosted the Late Show from his closet at home after contracting Covid, which rendered him contagious but “fine, just a sore throat and a bad case of the lonelies”.

In the makeshift studio for the late-night hosts’ Strike Force Five podcast (which Colbert temporarily rebranded as “Stephen Forced Home”), Colbert summarized the two potential speaker options for House Republicans: bad (Louisiana congressman Steve Scalise, an election denier who didn’t have the votes on Thursday) and worse (Ohio’s Jim Jordan, also an election denier accused of covering up sexual misconduct as a wrestling coach at Ohio State).

“You could not pick a worse speaker of the House,” said Colbert. “And keep in mind: the GOP just had Kevin McCarthy, so they tried.

“The bad news here is that the new speaker might be Jim Jordan. But the good news is … there is no good news,” he continued.

One of the lawmakers tasked with voting on a new speaker is the New York congressman George Santos, who has been charged with numerous counts of fraud. In a strange twist, Santos was photographed over the weekend holding a mystery baby in the halls of the Capitol. “That’s pretty weird,” said Colbert, “but keep in mind: all babies are a mystery – ‘I fed you, I burped you, I changed you, it’s 3am, just tell me what you want!’”

Colbert then touched on Taylor Swift’s relationship with the NFL star Travis Kelce, after the pair were photographed holding hands while entering the Saturday Night Live after-party. “Wow, they put their relationship to the hardest test any couple can: going anywhere near Pete Davidson,” he quipped.