These 6 TV Comedians Aren’t Laughing at Trump’s Election

For many on the left, these are the voices that have come to define political satire: Seth Meyers, Hassan Minhaj, Samantha Bee, Conan O’Brien. Their routines are witty, acerbic, sarcastic, silly. These comedians have curated their on-stage personalities to be over-the-top, and not overly serious.

But sometimes, a momentous event occurs that forces them to take a step back from their routine and speak from the heart. They take off the mask of a television show presenter and speak as a person. Tuesday’s presidential election was one of those moments.

Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert wondered how parents could describe a Trump presidency to their children, after some of the candidate’s inflammatory rhetoric.

“I do really feel for the parents who had to explain this to their kids this morning, especially parents with daughters because a lot of them, like me, probably thought Hillary would be our first woman president,” Meyers, who has a 7-month-old son, said on the verge of tears.

“Maybe you’re a woman who’s currently a senator, maybe you’re still in college, hopefully you’re not a toddler… We don’t know who you are, but chances are this moment today will be a defining one for you, one that will make you work harder and strive farther, and whoever you are I hope I live to see your inauguration, and I hope my mom does, too.”

In his 15-minute segment, Colbert did tell quite a few jokes (as well as don a kitten-ear headband and speak with a hologram of God). He, too, however, spoke to parents contemplating how to describe a Trump presidency to their children.

“Tell them what you should always tell kids: work hard, be kind, care about other people, don’t be selfish, don’t grab them where they don’t wanna be grabbed, and they’ll make the world a better place than Donald Trump can.”

For Samantha Bee and Daily Show correspondent Michelle Wolf, much of the focus was on the role white women — of whom more than half voted for Trump — played in the unlikely election of the Republican candidate.

“If Muslims have to take responsibility for every member of their community, then so do we,” Bee warned white voters.

Wolf, who by the end of her segment seemed on the verge of breaking down in tears, took Bee’s warning a step further.

“Some of those women didn’t want Hillary to become president because she’s a woman,” Wolf said. “That’s right: women can be misogynists, too, just proving that women can do anything that men can do — except be president.”

Hassan Minhaj, another of Trevor Noah’s “Daily Show” correspondents who comes from a Muslim family, said he feared for his life as a person of color in the United States. He told a heartbreaking story about a conversation he had with his mom, who is currently out of the country.

“My mom is out of the country right now — she’s visiting my grandma. She’s a US citizen. She’s lived here 30 years. She’s on the phone with me last night, and she’s like, ‘Hassan, I don’t know if I can come back until February. Am I going to be able to get back into the country?’ And the fact that I can’t tell her ‘yes’ with 100% certainty is heartbreaking.”

While most of the comedy hosts took a pessimistic look at the election of Donald Trump, Conan O’Brien led his segment with a nugget of optimism.

“We have been here before. We have had angry, bitter elections for 200 years,” he said. “The optimist in me chooses today to be happy we have fair and free elections at all.”

O’Brien has visited several countries, like Cuba and Armenia, that do not have free elections. The United States, he said, while imperfect, at least gives everybody the opportunity to cast a ballot, he said.

“Today Americans have the right to feel happy, angry, pessimistic, optimistic, but everybody should feel grateful that we get to vote and if we don’t get our way we have the chance to try again."