Late-night hosts mark Trump’s election with jokes, therapy
LOS ANGELES — Late-night hosts pivoted from candidate Donald Trump to President-elect Trump, combining punchlines and audience group counselling after the billionaire’s defeat of Hillary Clinton.
“For years I’ve come out every night and asked how you’re doing, but I’ve never meant it. Tonight I actually mean it. Does anyone need a hug?” Conan O’Brien said in his monologue Wednesday on TBS. Despite divisions among voters, he said, “the optimist in me chooses, today, to be happy that we have fair and free elections at all. It’s an amazing thing. “
And then there were the jokes. “The first thing I did this morning was call my old high school bully and congratulate him,” O’Brien said.
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel took viewers through the stages of grief, including denial (“No, the host of the ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ is not our president”) and bargaining (“Maybe he’ll only build the wall waist-high, to keep short people out”) and, finally, acceptance.