Jon Stewart’s Bloody Hand Leads Late-Night Outrage Over Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts, Email

Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert all got a good laugh out of the president licking Musk’s two left feet in AI-created video that actually broadcast at the Department of Housing and Urban Development after a hacker gained access to the system.

The late-night hosts joked that this is the kind of thing the federal government can expect when they go around mass firing tech nerds.

“The White House believes the video was made by a disgruntled employee, so that narrows it down to the entire federal workforce,” joked Fallon after sharing the viral video emblazoned with the message, “Long Live the Real King.”

The Tonight Show host kicked off his monologue with a reference to the weekend’s big political news, saying, “This morning I got an email from NBC asking what I accomplished last week.”

He then offered the perfect response for how federal workers could reply to Musk’s demand to list five things they did in the past week.

1. I received this email
2. I opened this email
3. I read this email
4. I laughed at this email
5. I deleted this email

Stephen Colbert, though, thought there was only one possible answer. He shared it on The Late Show, though he quickly realized that since Musk would likely be using AI to review the responses, it might be a good idea to sprinkle in some key words.

1. Your mom synergistically
2. Your mom effectively
3. Your mom productively
4. Your mom efficiently
5. Your mom, teamwork

Over on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, though, the host was just shocked at Musk’s demand that employees list off what they did last week. “It’s like the government is being run by BuzzFeed. It’s ridiculous.”

“Trump and his buddy Elon, what a team, we got a dick and a tater in charge of everything,” he added.

Fallon noted the midnight deadline, “That’s hard to take seriously when you’re stealing rules from Cinderella,” before slipping into his Trump accent to add, ‘How much more of a pumpkin can I turn into? Find out at 12:01.’

The mass email was just another example of why the late-night hosts thought Musk’s gift of a chainsaw at a CPAC appearance was appropriate.

“Have we determined if those are effective workers? Is it based on performance?” asked Colbert. “Are you going in with a scalpel so that you don’t hit any vessels and vital organs?”

He then showed the footage of Musk gleefully wielding that chainsaw, commenting, “So straight amputation … It’s like we’re treating public servants as some kind of underclass.”

“They’re just jumping in, chopping off heads,” said Kimmel. “It’s not just that they’re firing thousands of federal workers, it is the glee with which they’re firing them.”

“We have a non-vetted official, a guy who’s not been elected by Congress, a foreigner from South Africa who got a lot of his almost trillion dollars from government contracts directing his goon squad to plug into the hard drives that contain highly sensitive personal information for hundreds of millions of American citizens,” he marveled.

“We still haven’t seen Donald Trump’s tax returns. He and Elon have seen ours. That doesn’t make sense to me, but I’ll tell you what? They’re having a lot of fun with it.”

Watching the footage of Musk with the chainsaw, Colbert feigned concern with a deadpan delivery of, “Oh no. Be careful. You might get hurt.”

He went on to share a quote from an Examiner article that read, “‘Their only goal is…to dismantle democracy by traumatizing federal workers.”

“Good luck. Have you met a federal worker?” Colbert countered. “They’re hard to traumatize. These are people who still use fax machines. They drink from a Mr. Coffee that’s been in constant use since the finale of MASH.”

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart showed footage of various news pundits and politicians gleefully touting the mass firings.

Still, though, the longtime political comedian said he’s actually all for what DOGE espouses to be about. “I, too, believe government needs to be more efficient, to weed out waste, fraud, and abuse, and deliver the necessary services that Americans rely on more agilely,” he agreed.

He’s just not that impressed with how DOGE has launched this initiative, what with the mass firings, and subsequent re-hirings of many key employees, as well as misrepresentation of monies saved, like with Gaza condoms, and 200-year-olds getting Social Security checks. Particularly, though, he called out what and who DOGE is targeting.

“I’m starting to think that we as a country don’t understand where the real waste, fraud, and abuse in our system really is,” he said, pulling up a fake desk setup complete with calculator, mug, and lamp to “join DOGE” and look for cost-cutting opportunities.

“How about we take $3 billion in subsidies we give gas and oil companies that already turn billions in profits,” he started. “Oh wait, how about we just close the carried interest loophole on hedge funds that’s $1.3 billion a year. How, how about we sto the $2 trillion we’ve given to defense contractors to build a fighter jet that blows when everybody knows the next war is gonna be fought with drones and blockchain, whatever that is.”

“Holy s–t! I can’t believe it. I just saved us billions of dollars in 11 seconds,” he marveled.

The late-night host then went in on pharmaceutical companies, saying that our system is so broken, we get excited about President Biden getting the opportunity for Medicaire to reduce costs on 10 prescription medications.

“Pharmaceutical companies get everything from our government: tax breaks, research grants, patent extensions worth billions of dollars. And what do we the people get for it?” he asked. “The highest drug prices in the western hemisphere.”

As for those savings on 10 drugs, he added in growing outrage, “It would be embarrassing if it was a small drop in the bucket and the American people didn’t expect that we should negotiate for all their f–king drugs because we’ve already paid for them with our subsidies!”

With this, he crushed the mug in his hand, which immediately looked both painful and bloody. After a quick glance at his hand, Stewart joked, “I’ll be going to the hospital soon.”

He carried on, though, keeping his hand below the desk for the most part. At one point, he did bring it up to look at it, with quite a bit of blood coming from it, before telling the audience “it’s not that bad!”

What he does think is bad is the state of our capitalist democracy. He said it isn’t even right to blame corporations, as they’re “profit-seeking psychopaths that need the lowest wages and the cheapest raw materials to drive their highest profits.” The question is why taxpayers have to “subsidize their psychopathy.”

Stewart argued that if capitalism is exploitative by definition, then is not government’s role to put a check on that exploitation, to “ease the negative effects on Americans … not subsidize that treachery with our money.”

“We’re getting f–ked at a Diddy party and they’re making us buy the baby oil,” he marveled.

With a final check of his hand, Stewart wrapped his passionate diatribe by re-emphasizing that the stated mission of DOGE is correct, but the targets appear to be wrong.

“The greatest restriction of freedom in this country isn’t DEI and pronoun pressure, it’s f–king poverty and struggle,” he argued. “And the government’s role should be to end the corruption that enables that exploitation.”