Late-Night Hosts Laugh at 'Trump's Big Stupid Birthday Parade,' Celebrate 'No Kings' Protests

"This weekend was Father's Day and daddy got just what he wanted: no one came to Trump's big stupid birthday parade," Stephen Colbert said to kick off The Late Show.

"Don't worry if you forgot," Seth Meyers added from Late Night. "Everyone did."

Over on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host quipped, "Turnout was much lower than expected, or as Trump would say, there were record-setting crowds."

But the official count of people in attendance, at least according to the White House, was a quarter of a million people. That may be the government's official tally, but based on all of the video footage shown on television, late-night isn't buying it.

"The White House is now claiming that over 250,000 people attended the parade. It was an estimate, give or take 250,000," Jimmy Fallon joked on The Tonight Show.

His fellow late-night hosts were not going to let those sweeping shots of an empty lawn and half-empty bleachers go unmentioned, though, in light of the lofty number touted by the White House.

"Of course, the White House claims that 250,000 people attended, so now, apparently, a quarter of a million people looks like this," said Colbert, sharing a shot of the nearly-empty lawn. "They must be really good at hide-and-seek. MAGA stands for Make America Grass again."

Meyers had a different theory in his "A Closer Look" segment, speculating that maybe "everyone in attendance got to try out new Army-developed stealth technology that makes you invisible to cameras."

They didn't stop with footage of the crowd size -- or lack thereof -- in DC. They also looked at live footage of the parade itself, which was ... "boring," according to Kimmel.

"After all the hype and money, somewhere around $50 million, it was boring," he said. "It was basically a $50 million version of when a 5-year-old shows you every car in his Hot Wheels collection."

"It looked like nobody was having a good time at this thing, not even Donald Trump," agreed Colbert, showing a viral shot of the president looking depressed alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and First Lady Melania Trump. "That is one sad sack of potatoes."

"It looked like Trump was even bored at his own parade. You know it's bad when the person who looks most happy to be there is Melania," Fallon added, as Jon Stewart on The Daily Show agreed that the "the VIPs lucky enough to see it" certainly appeared to be "bored out of their f--king minds."

"There's Sleepy Don taking it all in," Kimmel quipped. "In fairness, that's as close as he gets to being able to sleep with his wife, so he took the opportunity."

Several of the hosts noted a subtle moment caught on cameras, when Trump tried to signal to Melania with his finger that he wanted to hold hands -- or at least that's how it looked -- only for her to ignore him.

"That was risky of her to reject his pinky because as Commander-in-Chief he could have declared a thumb war," Colbert noted.

Trump looking "bored" at his own parade didn't really surprise anyone in late-night, though, as the affair did come across a little lackluster on the screen, and in fact delighted most of them.

Meyers explained why the sight of "super sad" Trump actually cheered him up over the weekend, explaining that the viral shot of the president "is the essence of America."

"You can be the president of the United States. You can have an entire political party and a global media apparatus at your disposal, you can cow the media and the wealthy into obedience, you can command an army and deploy troops and have unlimited wealth and power, but you still can't force people to come to your f--king birthday party," he said. "The only way this could be any more perfect is if he was wearing a little paper hat."

The clear star of the parade -- at least insofar as it was the easiest element for late-night to crack jokes about -- was one particular tank that was a little noisier than the others, as well as the lackluster crowd that was not cheering much at all.

"We have a trillion-dollar budget for the military, nobody's got WD-40?" asked Stewart. "If that tank were a cart at the grocery store, you would put it back," Fallon quipped. "God forbid that tank is needed in battle."

"We may have won WWII, but this weekend, we lost the battle of WD-40," Colbert laughed while showing the footage, as Kimmel joked, "This one could have used some of Diddy's baby oil to get it going."

"This was less a show of overwhelming force and more like a military museum getting in its steps," Stewart decided.

They also poked fun at news coverage talking about the parade being intimidating, with smiling and waving soldiers, and odd choices like soldiers carrying military drones and holding them up in the air -- leading several hosts to wonder if they know those things could fly.

Both Meyers and Kimmel found the same pint-sized comparison when thinking about the overall military parade, with Kimmel calling it "our president's GI Joe-themed birthday party," while Meyers asked, "is that a military parade or a GI Joe-themed bar mitzvah."

"I know if that inspires awe so much as it inspires 'aw,'" he added.

Stewart did find a certain charm to the underwhelming affair, enjoying how the parade showed off the history of the Army "from its days of tri-cornered hats and muskets to its brave future as robot dog walkers," though they were not his favorite robot dogs of the weekend! Those came during the other events that dwarfed the parade in scope and attendance.

"So the crowd was a little sparse down in DC, but do you know where people did show up?" Colbert asked. "Everywhere else in America."

"The much, much larger crowds were the groups of Americans gathering to protest Trump and his new deport-first-ask-questions-later immigration policy," Kimmel said.

Stewart agreed, noting, "The real crowds turned out for the 'No Kings' march, where millions gathered in cities all across the country to protest our slow descent into authoritarian dystopia."

He then couldn't help but revisit his favorite part of the military parade when noting how Boston's "No Kings" protests happened to coincide with the city's official Pride parade, leading to joint protests and, apparently, robot dogs in Pride gear.

"The gays have developed robot dogs as well?" he asked after seeing the footage. "Or are those just the gay robot dogs that Secretary Hegseth wouldn't allow to serve openly in our other Army."

"They're not allowed to serve?" he said, before turning to the camera with attitude. "Well guess what, they are serving!"

The massive disparity between the protests -- and those creative signs the hosts were all loving -- and Trump's parade "had to be a rough birthday for him," Colbert noted.

He then compared it to a mother telling her son, "Billy, no one RSVP'd for your party. Maybe we could stop over at the neighbor's. They've got a ton of kids jumping in the pool yelling, 'We hate Billy.'"

But Kimmel appreciated that Trump was already putting his spin machine to work, pointing the finger of blame somewhere else. "The lackluster crowdsize wasn't Trump's fault, and believe it or not, it wasn't even Biden's fault," he said. "The blame for this one goes squarely on the radical left-wing weather people."

He then played footage of Trump complaining about the forecasters predicting a "100 percent" chance of rain for Saturday, before saying it was a beautiful day. "Sounds like he's about to start deporting meteorologists," Kimmel said, lamenting poor Al Roker heading to El Salvador.

Watching that moment, Stewart couldn't help but feel that it was perhaps the most appropriate way for Trump to celebrate his birthday. After all, "Nothing says 'I just turned 79' like shouting about how the weather forecast was wrong."