The Chinese spy balloon may have been destroyed days ago, but U.S. officials are still learning things from the wreckage — and subsequently, Jimmy Fallon was able to squeeze just a few more jokes out of the whole thing. We’re not complaining.
What inspired the latest of Fallon’s spy balloon jokes is a report from Wednesday that determined, among other things, that the balloon shot down Saturday contained antennae and other equipment designed to monitor communications — including cell phone calls and text messages.
But Fallon had a pretty funny joke that identified a major problem Chinese intelligence agencies might encounter from spying on U.S. phone traffic. “The balloon was like, ‘Based on what we’ve gathered, we should invest in eggplant,’” he deadpanned.
Fallon then stood silent for a few seconds while he waited for the audience to get the joke. And, for those of you reading this bleary-eyed through your first cup of coffee, the joke is that Americans are mainly sending suggestive texts to each other — the eggplant emoji is very frequently used as a reference to male genitalia.
“Meanwhile,” Fallon continued, “AT&T told their customers, ‘Relax, they can’t spy on you if you can’t get a signal.” Tough but fair Fallon!
There’s plenty more, of course. Fallon also talked about the latest wrinkle in that classified documents thing people have already forgotten about, as well as a ton of jokes about the upcoming Super Bowl.
You can watch the whole “Tonight Show” monologue in the video above.