Liberal late-night hosts absolutely lost it after President Donald Trump shared a fringe conspiracy theory suggesting that former President Joe Biden had been executed in 2020 and replaced with robotic clones.
The bizarre post originated from a minor account on the platform and alleged that what Americans see today is not really Biden, but “Biden clones, doubles and robotic engineered soulless, mindless entities.”
“There is no Joe Biden – executed in 2020,” the post claimed. “Democrats don’t know the difference,” it added, before tagging a range of hashtags.
Trump reposted the theory without comment on Truth Social over the weekend, but it didn’t take long for late-night television hosts to jump on the opportunity to ridicule him for sharing it.
Everyone knows that Elon Musk’s robot is inspired by Joe Biden and not Donald Trump @elonmusk @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/iQbqWovjJR
— Esteban Navarro Soriano (@EstebanNavarroS) March 12, 2025
ABC host Jimmy Kimmel opened Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with a scathing monologue about the post.
“This is a theory that claims President Biden was cloned and replaced by a robot which, first of all, aren’t robots and clones two entirely different things?” he questioned.
“Not in Trump’s head they aren’t,” Kimmel added. He then accused Trump of trying to deflect public attention from domestic policy decisions.
“I know Trump puts out this stuff as a smokescreen to hide the fact that he’s about to cut $600 billion dollars from Medicaid, but this is so deeply nuts,” he said.
“How is this not on the front page of everything? The president of the United States is spreading deranged stories about his predecessor being a robot.”
Thoughts have begun to spread among Internet users that US President John Biden is actually a robot pic.twitter.com/Fd7t2JhRbZ
— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) August 13, 2024
Kimmel used the moment to take a shot at Republican voters as well. “Hey, Republicans! Remember when you were very concerned about Joe might not have the mental acuity to be president? Come get your guy, because he thinks Biden was executed and replaced by a robotic clone.”
Comparing the theory to something an aging parent might say, Kimmel went on, “If your dad was saying stuff like this, you’d start looking for an assisted living facility.”
He followed up with a jab at First Lady Melania Trump. “I mean, if anyone was replaced by a robotic clone, it’s Melania, right?”
Still, he did acknowledge the sci-fi potential, saying, “A robot Joe Biden would make a pretty solid movie.”
Kimmel wasn’t alone. Fellow comedian Jon Stewart on The Daily Show got in his own jabs about the conspiracy theory on Monday.
Stewart questioned Trump’s sobriety when reposting the claim, after accusing former DOGE head Elon Musk of being under the influence during a farewell ceremony in the Oval Office.
Elon Musk during his meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office yesterday.
Musk seems to have some teeny tiny drug problems. He can’t fire drugs like DOGE did with USAID clerks. pic.twitter.com/1Y1Ipi7Ol4
— Douggie Fukkew (@MrFukkew) May 31, 2025
Musk, wearing a black “The Dogefather” t-shirt and sporting a black eye, appeared to be fidgety and uncomfortable as he stood behind Trump before he was presented with a key to the White House.
Stewart referred to a New York Times report citing Musk’s use of multiple substances, including ketamine, ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms, and Adderall.
“He told people that?” Stewart said, reacting to the claim that Musk blamed ketamine for bladder issues. “This dude is a one-man anti-drug campaign.”
Stewart mockingly offered up a faux ad for a drug awareness campaign. “These are your pants. These are your pants on drugs,” he said, as an image of Musk showed a digitally altered wet patch forming around his groin.
Stewart then circled back to Trump’s Biden post, calling it just another “new crazy thing” to distract the public.
“You’re saying that the Joe Biden who doesn’t even know where he is is actually an incredibly advanced cloned robot?” he asked.
“How much ketamine are you on?” The segment closed with a similar gag image, showing Trump with the same wet patch forming on his pants.
CBS’s Stephen Colbert also took aim. “Obviously, this is absolutely crazy,” he said. “You can’t be a robot and a clone, OK? It’s complete madness.”
Colbert then launched into a satirical explanation of how NORAD and scientists could’ve created the “Joe Bot,” a fictional android controlled remotely via Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
“It was a perfect plan with only one flaw,” Colbert quipped. “The Joe Bot couldn’t recognize George Clooney.”
He noted the core inconsistency in the theory. “That’s right: In 2020, a secret cabal took out an old, slow Joe Biden and replaced him with an older, slower Joe Biden.”
“It’s just like when you trade in your rusted out ’93 Honda Civic for an old man who loves trains,” he quipped.
NBC’s Seth Meyers also joined in during his “Closer Look” segment. Meyers remarked that the theory might actually help Democrats, saying, “It turns out that wasn’t Joe Biden who got stuck in a closet. It was a robot. And that happens to my Roomba all the time!”
He joked about the President’s debate performance, saying, “If the Joe Biden from the debate was a robot, I imagine there was a guy backstage just smashing the buttons on his controller screaming, ‘did someone spill coffee on this?’ I can’t even get it to close its mouth.”
While comedians were focused on mocking the latest theory shared by Trump, a Justice Department investigation was launched into the former president’s use of his pardon power during the final days of his term.
First reported by Reuters, the investigation will look into whether Biden was fully competent at the time or if others were making decisions for him, allegedly utilizing tools like AutoPen to affix his signature to pardons and policies.
Trump has long suggested that someone else may have been in control. “I think the autopen is going to become one of the greatest scandals of all time,” he said on Friday.
Biden issued a significant number of pardons before leaving office, including preemptive clemency for family members like his son Hunter and his brother James, with some going back as far as 2014.
The DOJ probe is expected to focus not only on those family pardons but also on death row inmates who received clemency.
DOOCY TIME: “When you look at the last-minute Biden pardons, the big ones, Biden siblings, Fauci, January 6th Committee, most of the big ones have the same very neat signature. We would expect that probably to be the autopen. There is one that looks different. It looks authentic,… pic.twitter.com/1ZeLcfcxQc
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 3, 2025
When asked about the investigation, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, “Americans saw with their own eyes a mentally incompetent President, and they want answers for that.”