Seth Meyers on Trump's interview fiasco: 'His brain is pureed cottage cheese'
All week, memes and scorn from Trump’s much-maligned interview with Axios’s Jonathan Swan have circled on social media and in headlines, which is “why Trump rarely steps outside his rightwing media bubble”, said Seth Meyers on Wednesday. “His brain is pureed cottage cheese and he can’t withstand the slightest scrutiny and, inside the bubble, the ghouls who profit off of him can make him seem alive so they can keep partying at his cool house.”
But when he does dabble outside the rightwing media sphere, the Late Night host continued, “we end up with Jonathan Swan from Axios looking like a tourist who just watched a Times Square Elmo drop his pants and take a shit on the sidewalk.”
Meyers recapped some of the most head-scratching moments from the 37minute sit-down, including Trump’s attempt to deter Swan’s follow-up questions on America’s dismal coronavirus statistics by handing the journalist “the fakest-ass-looking chart I’ve ever seen – it’s just four random bars in different colors”, said Meyers. “Is this the printer test sheet?”
Though the bar chart did look “like a prop they’d give a fourth-grader playing a businessman in a school play”, the craziest part of the interview, according to Meyers, was that Trump – floundering with a stack of papers, saying the US is “lowest in numerous categories, we’re lowest in the world” – “couldn’t even remember his own bullshit. That’s how fried his brain is – he wanted to say our case fatality rate is the lowest in the world, which would be wrong and misleading anyway, but he couldn’t even remember that.”
Even Trump’s usual media allies recognized this interview was a disaster, Meyers concluded, and played a clip from the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh’s show. “I don’t know why he did it,” Limbaugh said of the interview, since Axios is not from “the friendly side of the aisle”.
“At this point, ‘friendly side of the aisle’, just means ‘anyone who won’t ask a follow-up question,’” said Meyers.
“You know it’s bad when even the president’s allies talk about him the way they would warn a child to stay away from strangers. They talk about legitimate journalists like they’re pulling up outside the White House in a windowless van.”
Jimmy Fallon
After his disastrous Axios interview, Trump “cocooned himself with the weighted blanket that is Fox &
Friends”, said Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. The return to his beloved softball morning show after Axios and another widely mocked interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace demonstrated how Trump “basically tried dating other shows then ended up back with his ex”, Fallon joked.
The 53-minute ramble to Fox & Friends went “pretty much how you’d expect”, Fallon added – at one point, Trump tried to instill fear over mailin voting for the November election, claiming such a practice would delay results for “months and months, actually could be for years”.
“Months or years? It’s an election, not the results of a Covid test,” Fallon retorted.
The morning show also asked Trump about reports that he’s considered giving his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential ticket from the White House instead of the convention in Florida; Trump said such a decision would be “easiest from the standpoint of security” in a “beautiful setting” where he’s spent a lot of time. No mention of coronavirus. “Basically, Trump’s message is: ‘Nobody should worry about the virus,’” Fallon deadpanned. “‘Anyway, totally unrelated, I’ll be giving my speech from home.’”