Late-night hosts respond with appropriate subtlety to President Shithole’s racist comments

You can say this for Donald Trump: He sure is a vulgar, embarrassing old bigot. Oh, and he also continues to keep the late-night comedy hosts on their toes, as he seems inclined to leave his most awful actions and comments to the late afternoons, right before the nightly shows go to tape. (Perhaps he just gets cranky before bed/cheeseburger time.) Having to come up with trenchant comedic takes on—just spitballing here—a sitting president referring to majority non-white countries as “shitholes” while wishing aloud for more immigrants from homogeneously white Norway at the last minute doesn’t leave much room for subtlety. But, since that’s exactly what the Republican president of the United States did in a bipartisan immigration meeting around 5 p.m. on Thursday, perhaps subtlety wasn’t required.

On Late Night, Seth Meyers addressed the late-breaking national racist disgrace, noting during his “A Closer Look” segment that Trump made his comments “just before we started taping tonight.” Subtlest “shithole” joke: “To be fair, maybe he meant it as a compliment. After all, Trump does all his best tweets when he’s sitting on the shithole.”

Jimmy Kimmel called Thursday yet “another preposterous day” for the country, lambasting Trump for profanely and disgustedly rejecting a deal on protections for immigrants from countries like Haiti and various African nations. Introducing the whole “shithole” thing by incredulously prefacing, “This is an actual quote from the actual president of the United States,” Kimmel mused that it must just be a coincidence that Trump calls countries populated by people of color “shitholes” while praising Norwegian immigration, leading to his subtlest “shithole” joke: “Because if it wasn’t, it would mean we voted for a racist. Like a real one, and we’d have to get pitchforks and chase him out of the White House.”