Late-night Comedians Turn Iowa Republican Votes Into Punchlines
Comics poke fun at presidential candidates
With Donald Trump’s win long expected, Monday’s Republican caucuses in Iowa were short on excitement or suspense.
TV’s late-night comedians were more than ready were more than ready to make for that, however, with jokes.
Trump won the nation’s first contest for the Republican nomination for president, capturing 51 percent of the vote — far and away more than either runner-up Florida Gov Ron DeSantis at 21.2 percent or third-place finisher Nikki Haley, the one-time governor of South Carolina.
Wealthy businessman Vivek Ramaswamy trailed through the evening, and announced that he was getting out of the presidential race.
Trump has dominated Republican opinion polling for most of the last year, leaving the ultimate results from Iowa in little doubt.
That didn't stop late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon from cracking wise in their monologues from their respective Tuesday night shows.
“Last night was also the Iowa caucuses. Now, since I actually recorded this monologue last Thursday, we have no idea who won. It was Donald Trump. Probably. It's probably him, hate to say it,” Colbert quipped, too loud booing from his studio audience.
“You're obviously not from Iowa, because they love him in Iowa. I think because he has the exact same hair as an ear of corn. They call it the tassels,” the CBS host joked.
Kimmel, meanwhile, noted that the Iowa caucuses fell on the same day as the nation's observance of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday.
“Meanwhile, in Iowa, many caucuses were held yesterday. If you’ve ever wondered what is the polar opposite of MLK Day, it’s the Iowa Republican caucus,” he cracked, to audience laughter. “This is how they get the votes. You write a name on a piece of paper and you drop it in a grocery bag.
“The same people who are screaming about the Dominion voting machines are digging through a brown paper sack from Stop & Shop to decide who will be president,” he added, mocking the baseless conspiracy theories that Trump supporters spread about the 2020 presidential election.
On his Tonight Show, Fallon chose to mock the big loser from Iowa: last-place finisher Vivek Ramaswamy while also noting the snow storm which had struck much of the East Coast.
"Today I tipped a kid who was shoveling outside 30 Rock,” referring to NBC’s legendary New York headquarters. “And he said, ‘Thanks, Mr. Fallon.’ I said, ‘No, thank you, Mr. Ramaswamy.’”
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