Stephen Colbert raged Monday night against what ended up being the worst day on Wall Street in recent memory. The latest market volatility triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade wars saw the Dow and S&P 500 have their worst days of the year and the Nasdaq have its worst since 2022.
And to hear Colbert tell it, “Trump’s policies are not just hurting the market. According to the Atlanta Fed, so far growth in the current quarter was at a stunning -2.8%, signaling that the GDP is shrinking at the fastest pace since the pandemic lockdown.
“In the first Trump term, it took a disease to destroy the economy,” Colbert quipped before going in for the kill. “This time, he is the disease.”
Watch the “Late Show” hosts full monologue in the video below:
“The clocks may have sprung forward yesterday, but today the stock market fall down go boom,” Colbert said at the top of the segment. “The Dow Jones dropped 890 points. Now I do not know a lot of financial jargon, but let’s just say your 401 is not K. There is absolutely, there is no good way to spin this story.”
Still, some media pundits tried, as Colbert highlighted a particularly tone deaf analysis that aired Monday on Fox News before turning to an interview the president had on Sunday with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
“In his address to Congress last week, Trump admitted his tariffs might cause what he called a disruption. Yesterday, Maria Bartiromo asked him about that,” Colbert said.
“Is that what you meant? The stock market going down could be the disruption? What other disruption were you alluding to?” Bartiromo was then shown asking in a spliced clip. Trump’s response?
“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You ca not really watch the stock market, if you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters. And you can not go by that, you have to do what’s right.”
Colbert was not buying it.
“Oh sure, with a big enough time perspective, nothing really matters. ‘Beth, I can tell you’re mad I’m two hours late to our wedding, but I will remind you on a geological scale, two hours is punctual. Does a mountain care that I get distracted looking at sandwiches on TikTok?’” the late night host joked.
“So what are people supposed to do with Trump’s erratic policies as the markets climb one day and plummet the next? Well thankfully, ‘The Late Show’s’ newest sponsor is an investment firm that is on top of every economic shift.”
The “Late Show” then broke into a scripted segment for the fictional Huxon Financial, which assured viewers that there is no better time than the present to invest.
Watch all that and more in the video above.
