Seth Meyers: Fox News will let Trump 'get away with any lie'
Donald Trump’s disastrous and heavily memed interview with reporter Jonathan Swan for Axios “could’ve also doubled as an intake exam at a psych ward”, said Seth Meyers on Thursday, which is why the president returned this week to the softer side of his media bubble: the morning show Fox & Friends.
The morning show on Fox New lets Trump “get away with any lie no matter how outrageous”, said the Late
Night host, which was why the president called in for a 53-minute rambling “interview” on Wednesday morning, and “repeated one of his most sociopathic lies”: that the coronavirus is, to quote the president, “just going away, it will go away like things go away”.
“Is he talking about a pandemic or a summer romance?” said Meyers, applying Trump’s comments to the story of Danny Zuko and Sandy in the musical Grease. “Seriously, just stop saying stuff like that. You’ve been saying it for six months and it’s both wrong and dangerous.”
“Of course, if you’re a real estate crook like Trump, things really do just ‘go away’ because you probably have a bunch of criminal goons around you to make it go away,” Meyers added.
Trump also tried to argue that things are fine, pandemic-wise, since
“most of the map is in the white color” – as in, on a map of coronavirus clusters, there are large expanses of rural, low-case-density areas (white) as opposed to the surging case numbers – over 50,000 new cases a day in the US this week – in high population density cities marked in red.
“Yeah, just ignore the red parts and we’re fine,” Meyers deadpanned. “Kind of like how a plane crash is actually a successful landing if you ignore everything besides the black box.”
Jimmy Fallon
On the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon reacted to news announced on Thursday that New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, sued to shut down the National Rifle Association (NRA). “Wow, the NRA as we know it could be gone – aww, thoughts and prayers,” Fallon deadpanned, playing on the gun lobby’s standard refrain for mass shootings. “We’ll work on helping but not right now, it’s just too soon.
“Right now the NRA is in so much trouble even Trump is afraid to wish them well,” Fallon added.
The lawsuit alleges that senior leaders used the formidable gun lobby group as their “personal piggy bank” and illegally diverted millions from its charitable work toward executive excess such as a family trips and private jets. The case could derail the 5-million-member group, which is why the Senate majority leader. Mitch McConnell, a frequent recipient of NRA funding, “was seen breathing into his neck like it was a paper bag”, Fallon joked.
In other news, the Trump campaign asked to add a fourth presidential debate for early September to get ahead of early voting, which was rejected by the presidential debate commission. “Oh my God, we’re debating about the debates? They haven’t even started them and I’m already exhausted,” Fallon said.
“At this point, who even needs debates? Who is undecided?” Fallon wondered. “Who’s tuning in like, ‘Oh, I want to see what this Donald Trump guy is all about, then I’ll make my mind up.’”