dnesday’s Republican National Convention coverage, comedy edition, saw some new players enter the fray, and by “fray” I mean “basketball stadium where people lustily boo the second-place candidate....

The best late-night jokes about the RNC, Night 3

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dnesday’s Republican National Convention coverage, comedy edition, saw some new players enter the fray, and by “fray” I mean “basketball stadium where people lustily boo the second-place candidate.”

Conan O’Brien returned to the air, but his TBS show was out at Comic Con, another gathering of people who believe too deeply in one thing and wear funny outfits to prove it.

The newcomer focused on the RNC was Bill Maher, of HBO’s “Real Time,” who did a special live edition of his show for HBO and, because “Game of Thrones” is over for the year and many people have once again canceled HBO, for streaming on YouTube.

Maher usually airs on Fridays, and he will again this week. As his reward for going the extra, Wednesday mile, he, his celebrity panel, HBO and YouTube had to wait 15 minutes to start because vice presidential nominee Mike Pence ran long.

Who is Mike Pence? “A guy who looks like he forgot to be an astronaut,” Stephen Colbert said Wednesday, surmising that the Indiana governor was born after “lightning struck a jar of mayonnaise.”

But we were talking about Bill Maher.

And having his show join those commenting in a comedic fashion on the convention was a breath of cynical, disgusted air. (Maher is not happy with the Republicans’ nomination of Donald Trump for president, and he is as biting in his presentation as Samantha Bee on TBS, who also added a special edition Wednesday nigh

An obvious advantage Maher had was in being live, like Colbert's "Late Show" on CBS, so he and guests could react to the booing on the convention floor when spotlight orator and primary season loser Sen. Ted Cruz failed to endorse Trump.

“He told the delegates to vote their conscience,” Maher said. “Now when Trump is your candidate, there’s nothing lower than that.”

On the absence of big-name celebrities at the political gathering, he said, “Turns out stars are just like us: They hate Donald Trump, too.”

Maher may have been late to the Melania speech joke party, but he brought such a nice gift: “She stole a speech about her parents teaching her values, confirming what Donald has always said: Immigrants steal.”

There were some funny lines and sharp insights from the show's panel, which included sex columnist and podcaster Dan Savage, a Chicago native. But the most newsworthy came from liberal filmmaker Michael Moore.

“People are in denial,” Moore said, “but the chance of (Trump) winning is really, really good.”

As the thunderclouds rolled in after that, I turned to Samantha Bee’s special. Instead of treating the doings in Cleveland, though, it was about her staff’s bus ride to Cleveland, with stops along the way to talk to real voters in swing state Pennsylvania.

It was a good show, a creative show, but it wasn’t the right show for the moment. And since she and Trevor Noah are apparently in a public opinion bake-off over who should have taken over “The Daily Show” after Jon Stewart left, I have to say that on this night at least, Noah was the right choice.

“Daily Show,” from Cleveland, had its strongest episode of the week, which maybe gives it momentum going into Thursday’s live show, if there is such a thing as momentum in the arts.

Republican congressional leaders Mitch McConnel and Paul Ryan, who spoke at the RNC Tuesday night, “aren’t so much passengers on the Trump train as hostages,” Noah said.

Noah showed footage of the big moment of the day, Trump’s jet flying by in the background to interrupt a Cruz rally, a moment so rich in symbolism even NPR’s coverage pointed it out. “That’s how crazy this convention is: A plane is doing the hijacking,” Noah said.

And he used his own crowd to conduct a “kangaroo court spectacle” aimed at New Jersey Gov. and possible Trump umbrella holder Chris Christie, like the one Christie had held at the convention to target presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

His point, he said, was that Tuesday’s RNC was supposed to be about jobs, but it was, again, mostly about antipathy for Clinton. “The only job you gave them,” Noah said to Christie, “was angry villagers in a Frankenstein movie.”

Colbert also leveraged his live advantage and was solid. “From now on, it’ll be known as The Red Convention,” he said about the contentiousness stirred up Wednesday by Cruz,

But overall in Wednesday late night, you could sense the attention of the shows drifting a bit. Across the spectrum, there were fewer jokes about the convention, and there were, especially, fewer good jokes.

One issue: The late-night shows got caught up in former Republican candidate Ben Carson linking Clinton to Lucifer, but the clip took so long to play -- because Carson is the same guy he was on the campaign trail -- that not much time was left for other comedy.

I liked Seth Meyers' payoff of the long Carson set-up best.

“After each Chris Christie line, the audience yelled, ‘Guilty!’” Meyers said, “and after each Ben Carson line, the audience yelled, ’We don't quite follow you!’”

Here are some of the other good lines about the RNC from the Wednesday late-night shows:

Comic Lewis Black, guesting on Colbert, on the fact that neither Trump nor Clinton is well liked: “It’s a social experiment. You know, we’ve done it with people we like and it hasn’t worked out. So if we pick people that we really don’t like…”

Black on conventions: “This has to stop. Four days of a pep rally. Yelling for politicians? What is the matter with you? That’s like a pep rally for the bowling team.”

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James Corden on all the empty chairs on the convention floor: “I can’t believe they’re leaving early so that they can go out in Cleveland… ‘You know what’s more fun than this? Cleveland.’”

Cordon on an illness that reportedly hit some delegates: “Norovirus is a type of flu where the symptoms are fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, privilege, awkward dancing and plagiarism.”

immy Kimmel on a curiosity about the middle initial of, as all the conventioneers say, “Donald J. Trump”: “The ‘J’ stands for ‘Jamal.’”

Billionaire sports owner Mark Cuban, appearing on Colbert, delivering a stream of insults to Trump: “Donald, do you know that to be a billionaire, you have to have the billion part in your bank account, not just the air?”

Cuban again: ““Donald, your businesses fail so often you must have gone to business school at Trump University.”

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And Colbert delivered the evening’s obligatory Trump-brings-the-apocalypse line. Reacting to one of Trump’s sons pledging his dad would get his presidential tasks done ahead of schedule, Colbert said, ‘Yes, ahead of schedule. Donald Trump will end America sooner than we thought.”