Stephen Colbert on Biden's DNC speech: 'Water in the desert'

Stephen Colbert

The weeklong virtual Democratic national convention culminated on Thursday evening with Joe Biden’s official acceptance of the nomination for president in a moving, emotional speech on loss in a dark night for America. “Well, here’s the deal,” said Stephen Colbert airing live afterwards. “Biden spoke for over 10 minutes and addressed all the pain that Trump has inflicted upon our country, all the possibilities for healing our nation. But most importantly, not once did he whine about shower pressure.

“Throughout the convention, it was a common theme: Joe Biden’s history of loss and suffering,” the Late Show host said. “Surprisingly, we didn’t get a lot of jokes out of it, but there was a reason the convention hammered this point home: to cast Joe Biden in stark contrast with Donald Trump. Donald Trump couldn’t overcome any of the challenges of his presidency because he’s never had to overcome anything at all.”

“This is the grownup version of the college essay that asks you to write about a challenge you’ve faced,” Colbert added, “and instead of scrambling to put together a story about bouncing back from getting second chair in your high-school a cappella group, Joe Biden has a real answer.”

Related: Samantha Bee on 2020: 'Expect the worst from this election'

In his speech, Biden reflected on his own personal losses – his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, his first wife Neilia and young daughter Naomi, who died in a car accident in 1972 – and carrying on through grief. “Your loved ones may have left this Earth, but they never leave your heart,” he said. “They will always be with you.”

The vulnerable, empathetic speech showed Biden to be “a man who is decent, compassionate, flawed but honest – and that is water in the desert”, said Colbert. “He’s the sort of person who thinks before he says things, and when he gaffes, which he does often, it’s because his heart gets ahead of his words. He cares. And he tries his hardest.

“He’s like a lot of people I know, and you do too. Which shouldn’t seem remarkable, but right now it is. And when Trump tweets his all-caps rebuke tomorrow morning, he’s just going to show how our president is not presidential. But Joe Biden is.”

Trevor Noah

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah recapped the third night of the Democratic convention, in which former president Barack Obama delivered a “brutal” speech that got “straight to the point”.

For four years, Donald Trump has “shown no interest in putting in the work”, Obama said in his grave address, “no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t.

“Not even being mean about it – Obama was just laying out why President Trump has failed in a real and honest way,” Noah said. “I know he’s too classy for this, but I think Obama would make a great Yelper,” he added, imagining a “Barack O” Yelp review of a restaurant: “Vincenzo’s Quality Italian has no interest in making a great meatball sub. They won’t ever grow into your fave calzone joint because they can’t.”

The speech “didn’t feel like the usual ‘things are gonna get better’ Obama speech”, Noah said. “It felt more like a funeral for democracy. Basically, four years of Trump took Obama from ‘yes we can’ to ‘let us pray’.”

Seth Meyers

And on Late Night, Seth Meyers reacted to shocking news that former Trump adviser and “human pimple” Steve Bannon was arrested on Thursday morning for allegedly skimming over $1m from “We Build the Wall”, an online fundraising campaign for the president’s proposed border wall with Mexico.

It’s been a “brutal six months, so I’m gonna mainline some schadenfreude”, Meyers said of the news, which he called a “perfect encapsulation of the Trump era”.

“From beginning to end, the wall was a non-stop scam,” Meyers continued. “Trump scammed his supporters by telling them Mexico would pay for it, then we ended up paying for it. Then this baked potato Fabio over here” – a sunburned Bannon – “said he’d pay for it, then he scammed everyone again by allegedly skimming money from it. It’s a Russian nesting doll of fraud.”

Even funnier to Meyers was the fact that Bannon was arrested on a luxury yacht off the coast of Connecticut by federal officials and agents from the US Postal Inspection Service.

“Think about how perfect this is: the same public agency Trump is currently trying to destroy, one of the most cherished public institutions in America, arrested his former campaign manager for allegedly skimming money from a fundraiser for their scam border wall,” said Meyers.

And given that Bannon’s arrest occurred two days after a Senate intelligence report confirmed that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared sensitive campaign data with a Russian intelligence official, Meyers added, “it’s like the end of the summer TV season and they’re wrapping up all the story arcs at once”.