Jon Stewart on Trump’s comedy routine: ‘Normally I’d say don’t quit your day job but in this case …’

Published 28 July 2026 · us

Late-night hosts ridiculed Donald Trump’s disastrous attempt at a comedy routine at the weekend’s White House correspondents’ dinner. Jon Stewart The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart

Late-night hosts ridiculed Donald Trump’s disastrous attempt at a comedy routine at the weekend’s White House correspondents’ dinner. Jon Stewart The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart said that there was a “hydration break” in the war between US and Iran with a second straight day of peace. The host said that Trump decided to “stop bombing the strait of Hormuz and to start bombing at the White House correspondents dinner”. The president’s performance at the annual event had been widely criticised for being awkward and unfunny. “Normally I’d say don’t quit your day job but in this case … I will make an exception,” he said. Before the night, rightwing pundits praised Trump’s “joyful love of mirth” claiming that he was a very funny man. “How the fuck is he funny?” Stewart asked. He played a clip of him attempting a joke about a UFC fight but he “set up the premise and then just walked off into the street” before he played a clip of him interrupting a roast joke by saying he hated Adam Schiff, the subject.

“Traditionally roasts work because at the heart of it all you only roast the ones you love,” he said. “Saying you hate someone in the middle of the joke really takes a lot of the pleasure.” He also called out Schiff for having a fat head but Stewart quipped: “You might not be the perfect messenger to deliver a roast about someone’s big fat ugly head.” Stewart said that “the only funny part of the jokes was watching the crowd’s reactions” which had people “clearly rethinking the choices that led them to that night”. He added that Trump “has lived so long in a magical world of his own creation curated for his comfort and positive reinforcement” and is now “the ultimate snowflake”. But Trump had “no one to blame but everyone else” as “a great carpenter always blames his tools and Donald Trump is surrounded by tools”. Stewart also called out the night in general a “perverse bargain” and “an act of submission” given how Trump has routinely attacked the press.

“He just gets to shake hands with the leaders of a profession whose members he has subpoenaed, arrested, sued, cut their funding, threatened their licences, barred their access and even had them fucking deported,” he said. Seth Meyers On Late Night, Seth Meyers joked that the routine was “so great that everyone was stunned into silence” and defined the night as “a press-hating president speaking at an event honouring the press”. Trump started by rambling on about his “stupid ballroom” thereby “icing his own crowd” which has Meyers calling him the “first cool-down comic in history”. The host said that “he bombed so bad he kept shitting on his own speech” playing clips of him criticising the jokes he had been given. Meyers said when he’s asked if Trump is good for comedy he says “he’s better for it than he is at it”. He also referenced the reactions of those in attendance, saying they “looked like Matt Damon at the end of The Odyssey”.