Colbert on McDonald’s supply chain concerns: ‘Perhaps this will finally show Trump the true cost of war’
Late-night hosts covered the ongoing war in Iran and how the Trump administration is refusing to focus on rising gas prices back in the US.On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert told viewers it was day 69 of the war with Iran and despite Trump’s “one-page peace offer” it remains ongoing.Republicans are hoping to get a deal before the midterms with more than eight out of 10 Americans struggling to cope with rising gasoline prices.“The other two Americans couldn’t talk right now because they were busy sucking gas out of their neighbour’s Subaru,” he said.The war is also affecting other supply chains with the McDonald’s CEO warning this week that it might affect the burger chain’s business.
“Perhaps this will finally show Trump the true cost of war,” Colbert said before joking that without peace, he “could lose his 10-piece”,Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett played down rising costs by saying on television this week that credit card spending is through the roof,Colbert added that “bottle collection has become very popular” and so has the job of “bus station gigolo”,The administration continues to find new words to call the war, with Trump this week calling it a “skirmish”,Colbert joked that “my uncle never came home from the Korean hullaballoo”.
This week also saw Trump sending Marco Rubio to meet the pope.Rubio was given a pen made from olive wood to represent peace while the pope was given a small crystal football.“I smell regift!” Colbert said.After the recent exposé in the Atlantic which alleged the FBI director, Kash Patel, had a serious drinking problem, the FBI launched a criminal leak investigation to find the source.Colbert joked that after a few beers, Patel also says: “Yo, I gotta go take a criminal leak.
”In response, the original journalist published a follow-up about Kash Patel’s personalised bourbon stash.“She done doubled down!” Colbert said.On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host also spoke about Rubio’s meeting at the Vatican “to patch up the off-again/off-again relationship” between Trump and the pope.The president couldn’t go himself as when he enters a church “all the holy water starts to boil”.Kimmel joked that the “pope mistook little Marco for a child and baptised him”.
He also spoke about the war in Iran that is not nearing an end, with Iran firing on American warships this week, something Trump called “a love tap”.He is “quite clearly anxious to manage expectations on this thing” and this week posted a strange chart that showed how the Iran war is so much shorter than other conflicts.“I bet that’s not the only chart that shows his is the shortest,” Kimmel said.He also spoke about the new Kash Patel story in the Atlantic revealing that the FBI director hands out personalised whiskey bottles as gifts.Kimmel said they were “short and filled with alcohol just like Kash himself”.
Kimmel also reminded viewers of “the Trump-Epstein files”, as he calls them, and that the Iran war was “cooked up to knock that out of the headlines”.This week saw Lara Trump, the wife of Eric, praise her father-in-law and try to shift focus on to UFOs instead.“Kiss his ass all you want, Lara, he’s still gonna call you Laura at Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.On Late Night, Seth Meyers said that despite gas prices rising, Trump had been too busy “bragging about acing a dementia test”.He said that despite having the “posture of the Michelin man”, Trump has been pushing the importance of physical and mental health.
Twice in the past week the president has spoken about nailing the cognitive test three times, bragging that no other president has taken it in the past,“Because no one else has had to!” Meyers said,He said that despite all of the criticism aimed at Barack Obama, “no one ever thought: are we sure he can identify all three animals?”He said it was “pretty alarming” that Trump has needed to take this test so much but that despite him clearly caring about mental health, his health secretary, RFK Jr, has made it harder for people to take antidepressants,Meyers said he “probably just wants people to take cognitive tests to prove their sanity like Trump” and played footage of the president talking about all of the wild animals included in the questions,He said that is “sounds like the menu at his favourite restaurant”, poking fun at RFK Jr’s odd comments in the past about animals.
This week also saw a “very important and very normal event” where Trump reintroduced the presidential fitness test to schoolchildren, which saw him do his much-ridiculed YMCA dance.“That dance is the closest Trump has ever come to working out,” he said.
Great Western Railway to be nationalised in December
Great Western Railway will be nationalised in December, the government has announced.The train service, which has been in private hands for 30 years, mainly run by First Group, will be the 11th train operator on the national railway brought back into public ownership.When the Labour government was elected in 2024, legislation was immediately passed to renationalise all passenger trains when contractually allowed, a process that is expected to conclude by the end of 2027.The date for GWR train services to be nationalised has now been set for 13 December, the Department for Transport (DfT) said, when new timetables around the country are set to take effect.GWR has worked closely with the DfT in recent years in upgrading the mainline and introducing a new fleet of intercity trains
US added 115,000 jobs in April in surprise gain amid Iran war uncertainty
US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty.Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before
Iran war costs Toyota £3bn as prices of materials soar and sales fall
Toyota has reported a £3bn hit from costs from the war in Iran, as prices of parts and materials soared and sales dropped.The world’s biggest carmaker said profits declined in its financial year to March as it was “likely unable to absorb newly added impact from the Middle East”, in one of the largest warnings yet of the war’s impact on businesses.The biggest hit for the Japanese manufacturer was a 400bn yen (£1.9bn) increase in materials costs linked to the war, while it lost another 270bn yen in lower sales. Toyota is the dominant automotive brand in the Middle East
British Airways fares to rise in attempt to offset £1.7bn fuel cost hit
British Airways fares will rise to try to recoup most of a €2bn (£1.7bn) hit in fuel costs this year, its parent group has said, adding that the Iran war will dent profits.The International Airlines Group (IAG) said its annual fuel bill was now expected to be about €9bn, up from the forecast €7.1bn, as 70% of its supply was hedged, shielding it from the full impact of soaring jet fuel prices since the start of the conflict.It expects to recover about 60% of the €2bn additional fuel costs through “revenue and cost management actions”, with fare rises primarily loaded on BA rather than its sister airlines
GameStop CEO opens eBay storefront to pay for potential eBay acquisition
The CEO of GameStop, Ryan Cohen, said he was selling vintage video games, baseball cards, GameStop merchandise and a $14,000 pair of tube socks to help fund the company’s proposed $55.5bn acquisition of eBay.His platform of choice? eBay, of course.Cohen posted a link to his eBay storefront on Tuesday night, saying: “I’m selling stuff on eBay to pay for eBay.”Hours later, Cohen posted a screenshot with a notification that his account had been suspended
Gas-fired power still looks a safe bet for Centrica in the renewables era
The eye-catching non-Hormuz news in energy-land last month was that Great Britain is set for a record-breaking summer for wind and solar power generation. The national energy system operator even thought there could be periods – a sunny weekend or a bank holiday afternoon of low demand, for example – when more renewable power would be available than the electricity grid needed.So, on the face of it, it is an odd moment for Centrica, the owner of British Gas, to fork out £370m to buy a 16-year-old combined-cycle gas turbine plant in south Wales. After all, the government’s clean power plan imagines that, come 2030, Great Britain’s entire fleet of gas plants will be used to generate only 5% of its electricity, down from 31.5% in 2025
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