Late-night hosts react to Donald Trump’s 91-minute Republican national convention speech and his running mate JD Vance’s past criticisms of the former president.
Stephen Colbert
“We are live,” said Stephen Colbert on Thursday evening, just after the fourth and final night of the Republican national convention, “but after that speech, I am dead inside.”
“None of this is normal,” the Late Show host said of Trump’s address, just days after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a rally that killed one man in the crowd. “It’s deeply, psychotically weird that this is happening at all. Less than four years ago, this man decided to incite an attack on the US Capitol in order to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history. Then he was impeached, again. Then he was indicted, a lot. Then he was found liable for sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies.”
“And the Republicans are desperate for voters to forget all of that,” he continued. “Also, he’s not currently the president. So it’s weird that he spoke in front of a Zoom background of the White House.”
Trump gave the longest convention speech of all time on Thursday evening, clocking in at just over 1.5 hours. “Apparently, when they were chanting ‘four more years’, Trump was thinking ‘of this speech’,” Colbert joked.
Trump started off the “Bataan talk march” by “trying to strike a unifying tone”, Colbert said.
As Trump said: “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”
Colbert broke out his Trump impression yet again: “Yes, I will be president for all of America, both my supporters and the evil radical left socialists who want to unleash Latino Hannibal Lecter, or as they call him, Señor Cannibale.”
In typical fashion, Trump also promised: “We were a great nation, and we will soon be a great nation again.”
“Oh yes, I remember four years ago, in 2020, everyone was free to stay at home for months Lysol-ing their banana – if you know what I mean,” Colbert deadpanned. “And I mean: we were afraid of our fruit.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers dug into Vance’s history, as the Ohio senator was once a vociferous Trump critic. Trump’s running mate is “a Yale-educated venture capitalist who has jettisoned virtually everything he ever believed for the Republican party and Donald Trump”, said Meyers. “Just to give you an idea about how much Vance has debased himself to crawl to his perch as Trump’s No 2,” Meyers quoted Vance’s own past words about Donald Trump: “cultural heroin”, “America’s Hitler”, “noxious”, “I’m a never-Trump guy”.
“This is what I don’t get about Republicans: if someone spent years comparing me to Hitler and heroin and then turned on a dime and started sucking up to me and wanted a job, I don’t think I could ever get over it,” Meyers laughed.
Still, Vance’s transformation “is a microcosm of the Trumpification of the GOP”, said Meyers. “Trump did not single-handedly change the conservative movement. He’s very much an outgrowth of decades of reactionary politics and systemic failures. But he did help shape the party into a cult of personality by instituting a policy of ritual humiliation and obedience.”
Meyers recalled how the Texas senator Ted Cruz also bowed to pressure and transformed from harsh Trump critic to studious acolyte – and, like Vance, grew a beard.
“What is it with guys who went from hardcore Trump critics to subservient Trump toadies growing beards?” he wondered. “It’s like they said, ‘If I endorsed him, I can never look myself in the mirror again,’ and then realized, ‘Oh, but maybe it won’t be too bad if I change the way I look.’
“Oh, look at you, you’re a different guy, you’re a different guy,” Meyers imagined them saying in the mirror. “You’re not that guy; you’re a different guy; you’ve got a big old beard!”
