Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Jimmy Fallon happily snatched at some of the lowest-hanging comedic fruit President Donald Trump has offered during his tenure in the White House so far, those five simple words: “Person, woman, man, camera, TV.”
Trump delivered the instantly meme-able phrase during a Fox News interview, where he bragged that being able to memorize and repeat those five words, in order, helped him pass a cognitive test, and earn a few bonus points on it as well. “Oh yeah, there are points,” Colbert deadpanned on The Late Show. “It’s all part of the game show, So You Think You Can Keep Your Car Keys?”
Colbert went on to note that the test Trump took isn’t an intelligence test, and for those that get a perfect score, it only means they probably don’t have a cognitive impairment. “I’m gonna need something stronger than ‘probably’ for the person who has the nuclear codes,” Colbert cracked, before adding: “Wait, unless those are the nuclear codes!”
Over on The Daily Show, Noah joked, “Donald Trump is the only person who can talk about a cognitive test, but make me feel like I have brain damage.” In regard to “Person, woman, man, camera, TV,” specifically, Noah said it was pretty obvious Trump was just naming things he saw in front of him in that moment.
“You’re not a genius if you can do that, anyone can do it,” Noah joked. To prove his point, he named a few things scattered around his room at the moment: “Camera, chair, bookshelf, dead body, TV — oh, I’m a genius now, too!”
And on The Tonight Show, Fallon peeled off a handful of one-liners, joking Trump sounded like “someone playing charades after pounding Chardonnay” and that “the only five names Trump couldn’t remember were his kids’.” Fallon then busted out his Trump impression and joked, “I wanna say, Harry, Zayn… Niall… camera, TV.”
