Jon Stewart on response to Minnesota shootings: ‘What are we doing?’
Late-night hosts respond to Donald Trump’s underwhelming military parade, the record-breaking No Kings protests and Republican disinformation around the shooting of a Minnesota politician.Jon Stewart arrived at his Monday evening perch on the Daily Show reeling from an eventful weekend in US news.“Let me just say this to start off: Fuck! Just to start off,” he said.“This weekend – terrible! Again.I’m so sorry.
”Stewart started first with Israel’s military strike of nuclear facilities in Iran, a conflict Trump teased that the US military would join, after his administration deployed troops in Los Angeles to battle peaceful protests of his immigration raids.“The only problem with their posture – that I see with it – is their reluctance to commit the American military to fighting drawn-out and often pointless wars doesn’t seem to extend to America,” Stewart said of Republicans reticent to support Trump’s foreign policy.“The Maga mindset appears to be: we didn’t vote for foreign wars, we voted for civil war.”“They are looking for any pretense to stick their robot dogs on Democrats,” he said of Republicans supporting the use of military force on Los Angeles protesters, “and the strategy that they’re using is to inflate the threat that this country now faces, to so rile up their base as to make the left in this country – represented by over 75 million votes in the past presidential election – as a legitimate military target for the United States of America.It’s a strategy that’s been used before to gin up military conflict.
”Stewart then pivoted to the horrific shooting of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota Democratic state representative, and her husband, Mark, in their home.The suspect, Vance Boelter, had a hit list of Democratic representatives and appears to have espoused far-right views, but Stewart wasn’t interested.“I don’t give a fuck why this person did it,” he said.“I don’t care whose team he’s on, I don’t care if he listens to NPR or Fox News, I don’t give a flying fuck.What blows my mind is our resignation in the aftermath of this nonsense,” he said, referring to a campaign of misinformation and outright apathy in the wake of political violence.
“We’re willing to do things about other issues,” he continued,“Why are they attacking Los Angeles right now? Why is the right so willing to tear our cities apart in this moment?” Stewart then played a series of clips of Republican lawmakers claiming that any violence by any immigrant demanded a firm response,“Violence should never be accepted, it should never be tolerated – but that’s for their issue,” he said,“In the wake of Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, and Parkland, and El Paso, and Lewiston, and Aurora, and Buffalo, and Boulder, and Binghamton, and Highland Park, and Monterey Park, and San Bernardino, and San Jose, and San Francisco, and the Pulse nightclub, and the Colorado Springs nightclub, and the Little Rock nightclub, and the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, and the Ned Peppers Bar in Dayton, and the Waffle House in Nashville, and Virginia Tech, and UVA, and MSU, and UCSB, and FSU, and NIU, and SMC, and the Sutherland Springs Church, and the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, and the Living Church of God, and the Tree of Life Synagogue, and the Allen Mall, and the Westroads Mall, and Fort Hood, and Lockheed Martin, and – what are we fucking doing? What are we doing? By the way, that is a wildly incomplete list,We kept it to the last 25 years, and it’s still not everything.
”He continued: “Why is it when a foreigner, or someone that shouldn’t be here, kills one of us, we’re gonna put $150bn into border security, we’re gonna militarize our cities, we’re gonna spend trillions to bomb and destabilize foreign countries overseas, we’re gonna ban people from random countries from ever fucking visiting here, we’re gonna take our shoes off at the airport forever – but when we do it to ourselves, nothing?”“Is it that the only acceptable deaths are those that are made in America?” he concluded,“Our only response now is to tally-up the psycho scoreboard on whose side the perp belongs to?”“On Saturday, Trump had his much-anticipated stupid sweet 16, disguised as a tribute to the US Army he bone-spurred his way out of,” said Jimmy Kimmel, referring to Trump’s military parade,The $50m event turned out to be “boring” – “it was basically the $50m version of when a five-year-old shows you every car in his Hot Wheels collection”,The parade boasted corporate sponsors including UFC, a crypto company and Scott’s Miracle-Gro, “which is the product Trump uses on his head”, Kimmel quipped,“There were flyovers, there were combovers, the whole thing!”“After all this talk that this wasn’t a birthday party for him, it kind of seemed like a birthday party for him,” Kimmel continued before a clip of the muted crowd singing “happy birthday” to Trump.
He then cut to a shot of Trump appearing to doze off during the firework show.“There’s sleepy Don taking it all in,” he said.“In fairness, that’s as close as he gets to being able to sleep with his wife, so he took the opportunity.”“The turnout was much lower than expected, but as Trump would say, there were record-breaking crowds,” he added.“The bleachers, as you can see, are almost empty.
The crowds were sparse,”On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert celebrated Father’s Day, because “Daddy got just what he wanted: no one came to Trump’s big stupid birthday parade,”The White House claims that 250,000 people attended, though Colbert was skeptical,“Apparently a quarter of a million people looks like this,” he said over a photo of a sparsely populated lawn,“They must be really good at hide and seek.
Maga stands for Make America Grass Again, I guess.”“That was so sparsely attended that these poor troops were forced to march past empty bleachers,” he added before a clip of squeaky tanks rolling by mostly empty stands.“We may have one WWII, but this weekend we lost the battle with WD-40,” he quipped.“It looked like no one was having a good time at this thing, not even Donald Trump,” he said before a photo of Trump scowling as he watched the procession.“That is one sad sack of potatoes,” Colbert laughed.
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers also mocked Trump’s poorly attended birthday parade, where every administration official in attendance looked bored,At one point, the camera captured Marco Rubio yawning,“Everything about this soggy, poorly attended birthday parade just made Trump look more pathetic,” said Meyers,“The special guests were bored out of their minds, the bleachers were emptier than a football game at Oberlin, the lawn had enough empty space for a game of ultimate frisbee,”“But while deflated Trump was watching robot dogs walk by sparse crowds for his birthday, millions of Americans were fanning out across the country for historic nationwide protests,” he added, referring to the 5 million or so Americans who showed up for the “No Kings” protests in rebuke of Trump’s administration.
“Our system of government is in dire straits, but the massive outpouring of energy across the country was proof that Americans will not easily give up democracy,” said Meyers.“This was, by all accounts, one of the largest protests in American history.Compare that to the president who, despite all his power and wealth, looked like a guy who was using his crappy golden phone to call roadside assistance.”
UK grocery watchdog investigating Amazon over alleged supplier payment delays; company insolvencies jump – as it happened
Despite UK government borrowing slightly undershooting forecasts so far this financial year, tax rises in the autumn are likely.That’s the view of City consultancy Capital Economics, who told clients this morning:Despite the overshoot in May, public borrowing was £2.9bn below the OBR’s forecast in the first two months of the fiscal year. That said, the OBR may still revise up its borrowing forecasts from March in the Autumn Budget.That and already-tight spending plans mean tax hikes later this year appear increasingly likely
Reeves may need to raise taxes by £20bn in autumn after UK borrowing rises
Rachel Reeves may need to raise taxes by more than £20bn in the autumn budget after figures showed the government’s spending deficit reached £17.7bn in May, the second highest on record for the month.Analysts said a sharp increase in tax receipts had still fallen short of forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and given an indication of the weakness underpinning the public finances.The chancellor’s plans are also likely to be upended in the autumn when the budget watchdog is expected to revise down economic growth, further limiting the rise in tax receipts, and include higher borrowing costs, which are already above £100bn a year.The combined effect would be to wipe out Reeves’s £10bn “rainy day” buffer in the public finances and create another large financial hole, possibly as large as £10bn to £20bn
Trump signs order granting TikTok a third reprieve from US ban
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to delay the ban or sale of TikTok for the third time. The order gives the Chinese-owned social media company another 90 days to find a buyer or be banned in the US.“I’ve just signed the Executive Order extending the Deadline for the TikTok closing for 90 days (September 17, 2025),” the president said in a Truth Social post.Trump’s first executive order giving TikTok a reprieve came on his first day in office – just three days after the supreme court ruled to uphold the ban. Trump issued the second executive order in April
UK Uber drivers’ earnings cut after changes to secretive algorithm
Many Uber drivers are earning “substantially less” an hour since the ride hailing app introduced a “dynamic pricing” algorithm in 2023 that coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares, research has revealed.The findings are in a study released on Thursday by academics at the University of Oxford. They analysed data provided by 258 UK Uber drivers responsible for 1.5m trips.Having initially taken a fixed 20% cut of the UK fares charged, which subsequently rose to 25%, Uber introduced dynamic pricing in 2023, an algorithm that variably sets pay for drivers and fares for passengers
Lions handed wake-up call as Argentina hang on to edge thrilling win in Dublin
The 2025 British & Irish Lions tour is up and running but here was an abrupt reminder that not everything can be perfectly choreographed. This proved to be anything but a routine sendoff for the Lions coaches and players, who already have a good deal to reflect on as they head for Perth this weekend to embark on their eagerly awaited Australian tour.Should they win the Test series 3-0, of course, this pre-departure wake-up call will rate as only a minor footnote in the great scheme of things. The Wallabies, nevertheless, will have taken due note of both the historic result and the positive manner with which Argentina approached the contest. The Pumas, despite the absence of some first-choice players, led by 11 points at half-time and were good value for their history-making win
Impressive St Helens sink Leeds to relieve pressure on Paul Wellens
There are moments in any Super League season that can feel pivotal. Some are good, some are bad: some can even prove to be a false dawn and merely turn out to be indifferent. But if St Helens are to achieve anything this year, there is one moment here that will certainly rank as season-defining.Paul Wellens’ side, just as they have been for most of 2025, were nothing special in the opening half-hour against a Leeds team with genuine Grand Final aspirations once again. These two sides have 18 Super League titles between them but recently, there has been only one who has looked like claiming another
Jon Stewart on response to Minnesota shootings: ‘What are we doing?’
‘Nobody makes a record like that for the money’: how Gang of Four made Entertainment!
Eric Cantona and Ella Toone help meld football and art for Manchester festival
At a festival, are you Elinor or Marianne? | Brief letters
Speaking out on Gaza: Australian creatives and arts organisations struggle to reconcile competing pressures
‘A giant parenting group’: how online comedians are making a living by laughing about the chaos of kids