Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s weird campaign rhetoric and his Arlington national cemetery controversy amid a tight presidential race.
Seth Meyers
Donald Trump may be in the final stretches of the 2024 presidential campaign, but he “seems to be devolving in ways that’s unusual even for him”, said Seth Meyers on Tuesday night.
The Late Night host recapped Trump’s very bad last 10 days: “He’s been caught flip-flopping on a Florida abortion measure before caving to rightwing backlash, his campaign was reprimanded by the army for violating federal law by filming a campaign video and abusing an employee at a sacred military burial site, and he appeared at a joint campaign event with bear carcass enthusiast and Airbnb for brain worms, RFK Jr.”
“And as he gets more desperate, Trump is also … well, he’s just getting weirder,” Meyers added before a clip of Trump at a rally over the weekend, in which he assured voters: “I have your back, I have your heart, and I have every other part of your body.”
“He sounds like a plane crash survivor calling dibs,” Meyers joked. “Somehow Trump keeps getting more off-putting and bizarre, and I didn’t think that was possible.
“We’ve been talking about him on this show for nearly 10 years, against our will,” he continued. “When we launched this thing in 2014, we did not imagine that our collective public life would revolve around the weirdest, wettest, dumbest, most obnoxious business goblin alive.
“I feel like he’s currently as incoherent and unglued as I’ve ever seen him,” said Meyers. “I do think somehow, against all odds, he’s getting stranger.”
Case in point: another rally, in which Trump ranted incoherently about wind, bacon and energy. “Trump still lies and spreads deranged conspiracy theories, but now he’s devolved even further beyond that,” said Meyers. “He’s not even making sense any more. He’s not intelligible, even when he’s not talking about wind or bacon.”
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel returned to ABC after an extended summer vacation, and acknowledged that there wasn’t enough time to recap all the dumb things Trump said in his absence. “For a normal person, it would have taken a lifetime to say that many stupid things in public,” he said. “Trump did it in two months.”
Among them was Trump telling Fox News’s Mark Levin: “The way she treated Mike Pence was horrible.”
“Wait a minute – the way she treated Mike Pence was horrible?!” Kimmel laughed. “You sent an army of toothless goons to hang him! And then sat back and watched it on TV. Mike Pence is probably voting for Kamala Harris.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s new running mate, JD Vance, “can’t stop stepping in it”, said Kimmel. “For a guy who wears more eyeliner than Liza Minnelli, you’d think he’d have a better understanding of women. JD Vance looks like someone asked AI to make the Two and a Half Men one person.”
As for Harris’s running mate, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz – he’s “the kind of guy where if you sat next to him on a plane, he’d ask you ‘what brings you to Tampa?’ Because he genuinely wants to know what brings you to Tampa,” said Kimmel. “JD Vance would just sit there watching you sleep.”
Stephen Colbert
And on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert acknowledged the end of summer. “We’re in the fall – referring to either autumn or of democracy,” he said. According to a new USA Today poll, Harris leads Trump 48% to 43%. “That really restores my faith in almost half of humanity,” Colbert joked.
Harris has a significant lead among women, while Trump continues to lead among men, in what some experts are calling the “boys versus girls” election. “And remember, many Trump voters are not vaccinated against cooties,” Colbert quipped.
“Just because she leads nationally doesn’t mean Harris has got this in the bag, thanks to the electoral college,” which Colbert introduced with a ghoulish sound. “It’s a flawed system introduced by the founding fathers,” he noted, that could make the election come down to just seven states: “Michigan, Wisconsin, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
“With Harris’s momentum dominating the news, Trump is desperate to get attention – which he did last week, by flagrantly violating the law at Arlington national cemetery.
“That cannot be the way his campaign folks wanted to change the narrative,” Colbert laughed.
Last Monday, Trump visited the cemetery, including a section of recently buried veterans where election-related activities, including photography, are prohibited. Nevertheless, Trump brought his campaign photographer, and his campaign shared images taken at the site. A cemetery official tried to stop the group from filming, but Trump’s campaign staff reportedly verbally abused and pushed her. “Pushing an Arlington cemetery worker is one of the least presidential things you can do,” said Colbert. “Tied with giving a bald eagle a wedgie at Gettysburg.”
The worker filed an incident report with military authorities, and Trump’s “campaign goons then went on the attack”, said Colbert, accusing the worker of having a “mental health episode”.
“She wasn’t having a mental health episode! She was probably just terrified because she was in a cemetery and saw a walking corpse,” Colbert said next to a photo of Trump.
