Late night hosts cringe at Trump's proposed race and unity speech, fork the police

Late night hosts on Trump and race
(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Tonight Show, Late Night, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Daily Show )

"Two weeks ago we were on Instagram teaching each other to make no-knead focaccia, now we're dismantling systemic racism," Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday's Kimmel Live. "I think that's progress." The Black Lives Matter "protests, they're like the president's suits: They just keep getting bigger and bigger," he said, and not just in the U.S.

Sen. Mitt Romney joined a protest on Sunday, and President Trump and other "Republicans are mad at him for it," Kimmel marveled. "The White House is reportedly concerned about the president's low numbers and some of his advisers are pushing him to give a unifying speech to the country — they might as well ask him to dunk on Shaq, because Trump doesn't care about unity. He doesn't even care about Tiffany."

"On Thursday we'll hear a nationally televised speech about race and unity, and on Friday we'll hear an apology speech for what he said on Thursday," Jimmy Fallon joked at The Tonight Show. "If Trump gives a national address, it will be broadcast on all major television networks, plus you can also watch it on BET with a laugh track."

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The protests have been incredibly successful, Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show, but "law enforcement officers have met these calls to end police brutality with even more police brutality." The scores of video showing police "attacking protesters with no provocation whatsoever," assaulting old people, and "making a concerted effort to go after the free press" are "the antitheses of what America is supposed to stand for," he said. "This is supposed to be the country where you have the freedom to say whatever you want," and "the government is not supposed to physically punish you for that." America's policing crisis isn't a "bad apple" problem, Noah added, and "new rules and regulations" won't cut it.

"Police are lashing out aggressively because they see that the protests are working and that there's a growing demand for police accountability and for police resources to be shifted elsewhere," Late Night's Seth Meyers said. "We need to shift the money we're spending on tanks and tear gas and batons and move it instead to community programs like housing assistance and health care."

Tooning Out the News debated whether America should invade America, a failed state, with Richard Haass, former Bush administration official and president of the Council on Foreign Relations. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.