Late-Night Stars Tear Into Fox News, Lou Dobbs for Coddling Trump Instead of Asking Tough Questions

On Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert went in hard on Fox Business Network's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" interview with the president Wednesday. The common thread connecting their jokes was basically how the interview made a joke of journalism, since Dobbs heaped more praise on the president than he did ask questions. And the questions he did ask were far from hard.

Colbert joked, "I'd say that Dobbs was lobbing soft balls, but if that interview was any indication, he doesn't have balls."

The ABC late-night star showed his audience a few clips from Trump's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" interview, replacing Dobbs with a monkey watching Trump babble on about that wall again.

"While Lou was picking and eating bugs out of Trump's hair, the president whined about the media. And I think the underlying message from this clip you're about to see is, 'Why won't everybody love me?'"

Cut to Trump complaining about CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN for "negative" stories about him. "I'll say to my wife, 'Tonight I'm going to enjoy watching television, because I did great and wait until you see this,'" Trump told Dobbs. "And then they put it on and it's like, 'Oh, that's not so good.'"

Kimmel joked, "All I have to say is Poor Melania laying there listening to this, wishing she was back home in Transylvania. where they don't have television. Really, I feel for her."

The comedian then pointed out Trump "has done 18 of the 23 sit-down interviews he's granted as president with Fox," only to mock the conservative-leaning network with a montage of its correspondents asking "hard-hitting" questions.

"You're also one of the most loved and respected. How does that feel?" Dobbs asked Trump during the interview.

"By the way, we can't show you the rest of the interview, because ABC won't let us show an old man taking off his pants," Kimmel joked.

While reminding NBC viewers that Trump's memory is so bad he couldn't even remember the name of the country he bombed last spring, he played a clip of a Fox News correspondent reminding Trump in the middle of an interview that it was Syria, not Iraq, that he had ordered an air strike on.

"Fox News hosts are like dance moms quietly doing the routine in the background so their kids won't mess up," Meyers joked, then accused the network of being a channel "dedicated to showering [Trump] with praise."

Like Kimmel, the NBC late-night host also mocked Lou Dobbs for asking the "tough questions" during Fox's latest Trump interview. And by tough questions, he means Dobbs showered Trump was compliments instead of actually asking questions.

"Ugh. Usually when you see an old dude slobber that much he has a nurse with him," Meyers joked before pivoting to Fox News continuing to focus on Hillary Clinton, even though she lost the election to Trump.

"Of course in reality, Trump has been massively unpopular and dogged by scandal, in particular the Russian investigation, which might explain why when they're not interviewing Trump, Fox News is much more interested in talking about the candidate that didn't win the election, Hillary Clinton," Meyers said. "And in particular, they've tried to dredge up a series of debunked and overblown stories to muddy the waters and make it look like it was actually Hillary who colluded with Russia."

"Fox News would much rather talk about Hillary than Donald Trump, that's because the right in the Trump era doesn't have coherent principles or an ideology, it just has enemies -- which is why they prefer to inhabit an alternate reality where Hillary Clinton is president. And what little you will hear about Donald Trump won't be negative."

The CBS late-night host started off his monologue by saying, "Sometimes I feel sorry for Donald Trump, but not as often as he does."

"Donald Trump is always complaining about his media coverage, so last night he just unplugged, got away from it all and sat down for his 19th interview with Fox News," Colbert joked. "In this case, it was a full blown rub down from anchor and unrefrigerated Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs."

"I'd say that Dobbs was lobbing soft balls, but if that interview was any indication he doesn't have balls," Colbert added. "Dobbs was pleasuring Trump so vigorously that Mike Pence asked mother to change the channel."