Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s flailing presidential campaign, fallout from his interview with Elon Musk and Tim Walz’s popularity.
Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers took stock of a remarkably changed presidential race on Wednesday evening, which just weeks ago seemed like a lock for Donald Trump. “Remember that feeling when you turned off the debate and it felt like you had just watched that video tape from The Ring?” he recalled. “Then Biden was out and Harris was in, and Trump’s polling lead vanished faster than a bottle of scotch at Rudy Giuliani’s house?
“A little over three weeks ago, Trump was leading nationally and in every swing state,” he continued. “He had just survived an assassination attempt and he made a triumphant appearance at the Republican national convention with what appeared to be a tiny pillow on his ear.
“Then in just three weeks all that changed, and he’s not been handling it well,” he added, citing reports that Trump is in disarray and furious about enthusiasm for Kamala Harris.
“Trump is desperate for the spotlight and for some praise or positive coverage from anyone anywhere,” Meyers noted. “That’s why he slinked back to Twitter for a disastrous live stream with donor and supporter Elon Musk.”
But the plan “backfired” because the interview was “the worst of all worlds”, said Meyers. “It was insane, it was a technical disaster and it was boring.
“I like how Musk teed up this conversation as being for open-minded independent voters,” he added. “You know how independent voters are always looking for good information on the fifth most popular feature of a dying app! Why don’t you just hold a roundtable in the chat feature of Words with Friends?”
Trump blamed the interview’s poor sound quality, which he blamed for making his voice sound cartoonish, on “the complexity of modern day equipment” and released “an actual, and perfect, recording of the conversation”.
“Since when does cellphone make you sound like your dentures are banging against your tongue?” Meyers wondered. “And even if technology was responsible for the sound quality, you can’t blame it for you saying the absolutely dumbest shit possible.
“These humiliating missteps are only happening because Trump can’t coast any more,” he concluded. “A little over three weeks ago, he thought he barely had to campaign, now he actually has to work for it, he’s flailing badly, he doesn’t have anything to offer except excuses and conspiracy theories.”
Stephen Colbert
A new poll shows that Harris has a slight lead on Trump in all the major battleground states – one reason, Stephen Colbert theorized, is the popularity of her new running mate, Tim Walz. According to the site 538, the Minnesota governor has a net favorability rating of +5, compared with JD Vance’s -9.4. “Apparently, people want Coach, not couch,” the Late Show host quipped.
Colbert also discussed fallout from Trump’s interview with Elon Musk. “You can hear that slur, that lisp, but Trump’s campaign is in denial about how bad the interview sounded,” he said. When asked why he sounded weird, his team responded: “Must be your shitty hearing, get your ears checked out.”
“Even for the Trump campaign, that’s an unusually hostile response,” said Colbert.
Even more weirdly, one of Trump’s spokespeople, Steven Cheung, seemed confused about what a press release is. Following a statement released by the Harris-Walz campaign calling Trump and Musk “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024”, Cheung posted on X: “All these statements, yet nobody ever puts their name on them. F***ing cowards.”
“That is a press secretary apparently unfamiliar with the concept of press release,” Colbert mused. The host imitated Cheung’s thinking: “And now, Pringles released a statement saying, ‘Once I pop, I won’t be able to stop,’ but they don’t put anyone’s name on it? Does Mr Pringles even exist, or is he AI too? Hey Pringle, meet me in the alley after work, you high-sodium cuck.”
