Seth Meyers on Trump’s stump speech: ‘Like a drunk magician at a five-year-old’s birthday party’

Late-night hosts discuss Republicans’ futile hopes that Donald Trump will stay “on message” and a federal labor charge filed over his interview with Elon Musk .

Seth Meyers

On Thursday evening, Seth Meyers mocked Republicans hoping Trump will change the tenor of his campaign in an effort to win over voters. Such line of thinking was best summed up by the former Trump rival Nikki Haley on Fox News: “The campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about how she’s dumb. You can’t win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”

“You can’t treat them like they’re smart if you’re not also smart, you know?” the Late Night host responded. “You know how dumb people treat smart people? They shove them into lockers.

“You think notorious moron Donald Trump is suddenly going to be capable of having a smart conversation with voters? This is a guy who thinks windmills cause cancer, humans should inject bleach to cure Covid, and electric boat batteries will lead to shark attacks,” he continued. “That’s a real thing he said. Even the sharks were like, ‘Um, maybe we shouldn’t eat this guy. I think he’s gone bad.’

Related: Seth Meyers on Trump’s interview with Musk: ‘The worst of all worlds’

“What you want to happen is impossible,” he added. “Trump is a 78-year-old narcissist. He’s now the old guy in the race, and old guys don’t change.”

“Trump is incapable of staying on message,” he said. “Any message, both because he operates on impulse and because he has no message.” Case in point: Trump’s latest rally, in which he attempted to talk about the economy and demonstrate inflation with two different sized boxes of Tic Tacs, “like a drunk magician at a five-year-old’s birthday party”.

Meyers also disparaged the former president for his interview with Elon Musk, the CEO of X, formerly Twitter, in which he praised the billionaire for (illegally) firing workers on strike. “You know, I owe Trump an apology,” Meyers started. “I used to think he was an Olympic-level idiot, but I was wrong. Only a genius chess master Jedi wizard would do a conference call on a dying app with a South African vampire, and after a 40-minute delay brag about how awesome it is to fire people during a campaign in which the number one issue is jobs. While, it should be noted, sounding like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Sylvester the Cat. Was he wearing those Halloween fangs already? Was it just a mouthful of Tic Tacs?

“Just take a second to appreciate how disgusting this is: two billionaire ghouls laughing with each other about firing workers just for exercising their legally protected right to strike,” he added. As a result, the United Auto Workers (UAW) filed a federal labor charge against both Musk and Trump for intimidating and threatening workers.

Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, called Trump a “scab” on CNN. “It’s true, he’s a scab – he looks like someone picked at him and he didn’t heal properly,” Meyers quipped.

Stephen Colbert

And on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert looked ahead to next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago. The energy is high; as one participant told the New York Times: “Before it was going to be a wake; now it’s going to be Mardi Gras.”

“Yep, it’s going to be Mardi Gras – just don’t ask Chuck Schumer how he got all those beads,” Colbert joked.

At the convention, or what some are calling “Dem-palooza,” Democrats are trying to “spread the good vibes” with friendship bracelets and campaign training at the city’s convention center, as well as free manicures. “That’s nice,” said Colbert. “They’re gonna sell democracy with spa services. Bernie Sanders is going to be there giving out full Brazilians – ‘OK, now brace yourself, because when I’m done, you’ll be left with just the top 1%.’”

Joe Biden will speak on Monday night, then “turn the keys over” to allow the event to focus on Harris. “That is so wonderful,” said Colbert. “It’s always better when the seniors hand over the keys willingly. Otherwise you have to go Benadryl in the pudding.

“Even though we may have gotten used to Kamala being the nominee – or the Kamala-minee – the change has thrown the convention organizers for a loop,” Colbert continued. Party planners typically have months to plan the week’s political choreography. “It’s true – at the Republican national convention, it took them nearly a month to fully inflate Matt Gaetz’s face,” Colbert quipped, referring to the Florida congressman’s suspected use of facial fillers.