Seth Meyers took the last two weeks off, which, for political news, is basically a decade in Trump’s America. Last night’s Late Night, then, wasn’t just a return to the show’s studio after six months in quarantine, but a chance to catch up on every sad, scary, ridiculous bit of nonsense to come out of the Trump White House in the last few weeks. And Meyers didn’t let it go to waste: the show’s opening monologue is a solid 15 minutes of comedy that runs through everything that’s given us a headache since late August. Meyers speeds from the RNC to Trump’s attempt to brand himself as a “law and order” president despite surrounding himself with crooks, his continued lies about the state of the country, and, finally, how the Commander-in-Chief has called U.S soldiers who died in war “losers” and “suckers”—with just as many tangents and asides as he would’ve indulged in back in his in-laws’ attic.
The last few minutes are the ones worth watching. They contrast Trump’s laughable attempt to portray himself as an enemy of the military-industrial complex with the many things he’s done as President to benefit it, from expanding bombings in Afghanistan, to selling arms to countries involved in indefensible wars, to a regular increase of our already exorbitant military spending. And then Meyers analyzes how the story about Trump insulting America’s soldiers reveals the distortions and blatant partisanship of the right-wing media, including Fox News—whose own national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, confirmed the story, only for Fox hosts to repeatedly call it a hoax and at different points call it a lie, a hit job organized by the Biden campaign, and even a “deep state” attack on the president.
Is this clip cathartic? Yeah, a bit. It’s probably counter-productive, as well, unfortunately—the more comedians point out Trump’s blatant bullshit the more his followers seem to love him. That gives every show and every segment like this a melancholy afterglow—it might help those of us who feel like we’re losing our mind over how idiotic everything is to see that idiocy openly ripped apart on national TV, but that’s undercut by the awareness that it won’t change anybody’s mind, and if anything, will only make Trump supporters more passionate in their depressing hero worship. Is it funny, though? This time it is, legitimately so. I audibly laughed a few times throughout, even with only a brief glimpse of the sea captain. And since there’s not a lot worth laughing about these days, that means it’s worth a watch. Check it out below.