Seth Meyers looked incredulous on Monday evening’s Late Night with Seth Meyers as he described President Donald Trump’s latest personal attack against him.
On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Meyers was one of the worst television performers of all time. “Why does NBC waste its time and money on a guy like this?” Trump asked. “NO TALENT, NO RATINGS, 100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL!!!”
Meyers marveled at the centerpiece of the post, however, where Trump bemoaned, in a textbook example of projection, that the late night host recently “talked endlessly about electric catapults on aircraft carriers which I complain about as not being as good as much less expensive steam catapults. On and on he went, a truly deranged lunatic.”
The idiom of the pot calling the kettle black, of course, hardly does this statement justice.
“I’m not the one who talks endlessly about catapults on aircraft carriers!” a wide-eyed Meyers practically shouted. “You’re the one who talks endlessly about catapults on aircraft carriers!” What immediately followed was a biting, classic Late Night montage of Trump mentioning such catapults, which help aircraft launch from carriers at sea, scores of times in public speeches over the years (“I’m the chief catapult!” Trump even declared in 2023).
“Until you said something,” Meyers went on, over howls of laughter from his audience, “I didn’t even know aircraft carriers had catapults.”
Donald Trump's obsessions and threats alike impact late night television
Meyers explained he had no desire to discuss the subject, nor other Trump obsessions such as sinks and showers (which received much attention earlier in the show), but had no choice but to cover what the most powerful man in the world constantly rambled on about. “You make us talk about what you’re talking about, and then we all sound crazy.” Indeed, this first part is the media’s job -- even for comedy news programs.
Meyers first covered Trump’s fixation on catapults on Thursday, Oct. 30, the show the president referenced, explaining that electromagnetic launching systems were valuable upgrades for the U.S. Navy over the older steam systems. Despite Trump’s post insisting Meyers went “on and on,” the commentary lasted just over two minutes. This feud neatly encapsulates the well-known dishonesty and hypocrisy, or blame deflection, inherent to Trump’s character.
On Monday night, the comedian focused on the absurd nature of Trump’s attack, declining to directly address the troubling final line. This was a misstep. Trump suggesting that a show that is “100% ANTI TRUMP” might be illegal, and implicitly worthy of punishment, reminds one of the Trump administration’s efforts to get Jimmy Kimmel off the air in September — a dangerous attack on free speech for critics of the president.
Trump has devoted much recent energy to bashing late night hosts like Kimmel, Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon — and to reframing the liberal leanings of their programs, and all the accompanying mockery, as unlawful. It is not, as the First Amendment protects such speech. Here, Trump may be thinking of the Equal Time Rule and, knowingly or not, twisting it to justify attempts to get critics off the air. This rule, of course, only requires giving political candidates equal in-person airtime. It does not require balanced commentary or jokes. Meyers should have taken a pause from the humor to note this latest move in the authoritarian-esque war on late night television.