Late-night hosts have ridiculed Donald Trump's threats against Iran, after the US president posted an alarming message on Truth Social warning that 'a whole civilisation will die tonight' before a late-stage ceasefire was reached.
Jimmy Kimmel compared the episode to a dangerous version of The Celebrity Apprentice, saying: 'Probably the most dangerous episode of the Celebrity Apprentice yet. Today was D-Day – in this case, the D stands for dementia, but it was D-Day.' He noted that Trump had given a hard deadline of 5pm local time for Iran to 'Open the F-ing strait or you'll be living in hell', then later backed off.
'This is how it goes every single time Trump says something insane,' Kimmel said. 'He says, “I’m going to kill everybody tomorrow at 5pm.” Then we all freak out and then he backs off. He’s like, “You know what? Actually, I’ll kill everyone in two weeks.” Then we relax, and then he forgets he ever said it in the first place. He has the memory and the skin colour of a goldfish.'
Stephen Colbert, on the Late Show, avoided the topic initially by joking about the Artemis II space mission, saying astronauts might want to 'take a couple laps around the parking lot, till the explosions stop'. He later returned to Trump's posts, including one where the president dropped an f-bomb and invoked Allah, which Colbert said suggested Trump 'apparently converted to Islam'.
Kimmel also criticised the calm reaction from congressional Republicans, who dismissed the threats as 'big talk'. He noted that attacking civilian power plants is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, adding: 'I guess he figures he’s done all the other crimes, he might as well do the war ones, too.'
