A late-night comedy segment featuring Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert has gone viral over the Thanksgiving holiday, drawing tens of millions of views across social media and prompting renewed debate about the role of satire in a polarized political era.

The segment, aired separately on each host’s respective program but heavily remixed and circulated online as a joint “roast,” portrays former President Donald J. Trump as panicked and uncharacteristically silent on Thanksgiving—a day when he has often posted prolifically in the past. In the sketches, Kimmel and Colbert lampoon Trump’s posting habits, his relationship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and a series of exaggerated or fabricated political scenarios that have proliferated across partisan corners of the internet.

While the segment itself is unmistakably comedic, many of the clips being shared online have been stripped of context, edited together without the surrounding jokes, or captioned in ways that imply the content reflects actual events. This blending of satire and political commentary has become increasingly common in recent years, often generating both confusion and heated responses from supporters and critics alike.

In the original routines, Kimmel mocks what he jokingly calls “Trump panic mode,” suggesting that the former president was watching late-night television and “running around Mar-a-Lago screaming at the walls.” Colbert, for his part, riffs on Trump’s habit of posting about phone calls as he is having them, parodying a fictional message about an ongoing conversation with President Putin. Both hosts lean into the holiday timing, framing the bit as a Thanksgiving special focused on the year’s political absurdities.

Comedy analysts and media scholars say the segment landed at a moment of heightened political tension, in which satire increasingly competes with—or is mistaken for—factual reporting. “Late-night comedy has long been a venue for political critique, but the digital environment makes it easier than ever for satirical narratives to be detached from their original context,” said Dr. Leigh Hartman, a professor of media studies at Georgetown University. “Once the clips hit TikTok, Instagram, or X, they take on a life of their own.”

This dynamic was evident over the weekend, as several out-of-context snippets circulated online claiming that the hosts had exposed significant political developments, including a fictitious vote in Congress related to the release of the Epstein files and a fabricated storyline involving asylum procedures tied to an alleged attacker in Washington, D.C. None of these claims are grounded in verified reporting; rather, they originated in the comedic sketches themselves or in user-edited mashups.

Representatives for both Kimmel and Colbert confirmed that the segments were intended purely as comedy and did not reflect real-world events. Still, the speed with which the clips spread—and the intensity with which some viewers embraced them—underscored the challenge facing media consumers during a contentious election cycle.

Trump has not issued a direct response to the segment, though several supporters on social media accused late-night hosts of “election interference” and “political harassment,” echoing familiar criticisms that the former president himself has often leveled at entertainment figures. Others celebrated the sketches as a return to form for late-night political comedy, which has played a central role in shaping public discourse since the early days of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.

Political satirists, however, argue that comedy has long served as an entry point for engaging audiences with civic life. “People turn to satire when the political environment feels overwhelming,” said Alicia Chen, a researcher at the Center for Media Literacy. “The danger is not the comedy itself, but the way fragmented media ecosystems can distort its meaning.”

For now, the viral Kimmel-Colbert mashup continues to dominate conversation across platforms, fueled by both its sharp humor and the controversy surrounding its interpretation. Whether the segment will influence political attitudes remains unclear, but its rapid spread highlights the central role late-night satire continues to play in America’s complex media landscape.