Jon Stewart on Trump’s Gatsby party: ‘The theme was apparently gross income inequality’

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party held just hours before millions of Americans lost their food stamp benefits. Jon Stewart On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart mocked House speaker Mike Johnson’s insistence that Trump is “desperate for Snap benefits to flow to the American people”, even as his administration let the largest food assistance program in the nation, supporting around 42 million Americans, lapse during the government shutdown. Stewart played a clip of Johnson assuring that Trump “is a big-hearted president”. “Is he? Big-hearted? Loves us?” Stewart replied. “Because again, and maybe I’m misinterpreting it, but he did just recently dump diarrhea on all of us.” Stewart then played Trump’s infamous AI video in which he is depicted dumping feces on New York protesters. “He cares a lot about the American people,” Stewart deadpanned. “Maybe that is out of love. I don’t know.” Related: Stephen Colbert on ex-prince Andrew: ‘Pervert formerly known as prince’ Even worse, Trump held a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago this weekend, hours before the Snap benefits expired. The party “once and for all shows that Donald Trump doesn’t give a fuck about even looking like he gives a fuck at all”, Stewart declared. “On the very night Snap benefits ended, Trump threw a Great Gatsby-themed ode to decadence and hedonism that even Jeffrey Epstein would have thought was a little over the top,“ he continued. “There were dancers, costumes, champagne – a wonderful celebration where the theme was apparently gross income inequality.” “The slogan of the party, as people were losing their food benefits was, I shit you not, ‘a little party never killed nobody,’” he fumed. “Did you even read the Great Gatsby?! Spoiler alert, the party killed somebody! Two-bodies! How do you not know that? I knew that, and I’ve only read the cliff notes.” “Usually a time of national suffering, there’s a generally-accepted principle in leadership that you at least pretend to feel the pain of the people that you represent,” he added. “But this president seems to go out of his way to let struggling Americans know that he is doing very well.” Stewart pointed to Trump’s $300m gilded ballroom project, as yet another example of his lack of pretense. “Your premiums may be going up, tariffs may be shutting down your small businesses, you may be losing your food assistance, but it’ll all okay because Donald Trump is building a ballroom that looks like the inside of Marie Antoinette’s vagina,” he joked. Stephen Colbert “There are so many bad parts of a government shutdown, but the worst so far is that as of this weekend, nearly 42 million Americans have lost their food stamp benefits,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show on the 34th day of the government shutdown, with no end in sight. “No one should understand the importance of daily meals more than Donald Trump,” he added. “Hungry is his favorite emotion. It’s his whole thing – Trump and food is like JFK and sex, or Thomas Jefferson and sex, or Lincoln and his hat, which he had sex with.” Last week, the Trump administration claimed that it couldn’t use USDA emergency funds for Snap benefits. But on Friday, a federal judge directed the administration to use them anyway for the month of November. “Of course, like all good news during the Trump administration, he managed to make it bad,” said Colbert, as the administration has since said that it will only partially fund Snap, and it could take months because it declined to dip into other contingency pots to find the full $8bn required to fund the program. “So Trump and his people are sitting on a pile of money while American children go hungry, just so they can put pressure on Democrats,” Colbert summarized. Jimmy Kimmel On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host noted that Trump’s “disapproval rating” is 63%. “And what do you do when you have a terrible approval rating? You throw the most ill-timed, tone-deaf Halloween party imaginable,” he said of Trump’s Gatsby bash – “a theme you would select only if you’ve never read the Great Gatsby. “You know, throwing a party at your private golf club where the theme is rich white people hours before millions of Americans are set to lose their food assistance might be the Trumpiest Trump move of all time,” he said. “It felt like the last big bash before the Epstein files come out.” Nevertheless, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” “That’s true, he doesn’t want them to go hungry,” Kimmel responded. “He just wants them to lose their health insurance. He wants them to eat, but health insurance? No.” Seth Meyers And on Late Night, Seth Meyers touched on Trump’s redecoration of a White House bathroom to befit his garish style – all white marble, with gold finishes. Trump called the changes “very appropriate for the time of Abraham Lincoln. “I would love to know how Trump came to the conclusion that the changes were ‘appropriate for the time of Lincoln,’” Meyers laughed. “Does he think Lincoln was a high-roller who loved gold trash cans? Every story I’ve heard about Lincoln is like ‘he did his homework with a lump of coal on the back of a shovel in the pouring rain.’ Or ‘did you know he put himself through law school by eating mud for eight cents a day?’ But to hear Trump talk, Lincoln was like, what, best friends with Hugh Hefner?” Trump has also posted repeatedly about the renovation on Truth Social. “Look, it’s never normal to obsess over a new bathroom, but it’s especially crazy to obsess over a luxurious new bathroom right as tens of millions of Americans are facing uncertainty over food assistance,” said Meyers. “What we should be talking about instead is the government shutdown you’re not solving or the food assistance you refuse to fund,” he added. “Working families are struggling while you renovate your bathroom or you build your ballroom, and that’s why your approval ratings are in the toilet.”