Late night hosts get half-serious about Nicki Minaj and COVID misinformation, still crack lots of testicle jokes

"There's a lot going on in the world right now, but there is one story that is more important that all of them combined," Trevor Noah said on Thursday's Daily Show. "I'm talking about the ongoing saga of Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's swollen testicles." Thanks to the combination of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and Minaj's "millions of followers," he said, "this story has blown up bigger than, I don't know, a pair of Trinidadian testicles."

Minaj is now furious at the White House for offering her a phone chat, not an invitation, Noah said, but "it turns out a lot of people back in Trinidad are are even more mad at her for making their country the butt of jokes — I'm sorry, the ball of jokes." To help, he interviewed Trinidad's minister of health about the vaccine misinformation swirling around the country.

"The latest nonsense COVID treatment making the rounds on Facebook claims that the coronavirus can be killed by inhaling onion fumes and eating onions," or by gargling Betadine, an antiseptic used to clean wounds and in douches, Stephen Colbert said at The Late Show. "At this point, we should just get ahead of the curve and announce everything that does not treat COVID," he said, and he did.

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President Biden announced a trilateral security alliance with Australia and Britain on Wednesday, and it's a really big deal, Colbert said. "But the takeaway from this historic meeting is that Biden appeared to forget the Australian prime minister's name."

"We should consider ourselves lucky he didn't call him Kangaroo Jack," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "Biden gets away with stuff like this all the time. When you spend your whole life calling people 'pal' and 'sport,' who ever knows if you forgot their name or not?"

"You have to love humans: We just launched four civilians into orbit on a recreational space flight, we're still more interested in uncovering the mystery of Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's balls — or at least I am," Kimmel admitted. He made Minaj an offer she's sure to refuse.

Yes, "we are now on Day 4 of the scrandal — a scrotal scandal," Seth Meyers quipped on Late Night, "but here's my question: More than 5.81 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide. If it gives you big balls, how come this is the first we're hearing of it?" He said it's a "bummer" Dr. Fauci won't get to meet Minaj, but also that "we've gone so insane as a nation, we've turned our most celebrated infectious disease expert into an exasperated high school sex ed teacher."

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.