For most people, making an error in front of millions of potential eyeballs would be a nightmare scenario. For Seth Meyers, it’s one of the perks of being a late-night television host. Especially when said error is the fault of your trusty cue card guy.
During Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment, Meyers claimed that president-elect Donald Trump is “hazing the rest of the GOP… by making them swallow a bunch of deeply unpopular, grotesquely unqualified cabinet member picks that even they hate.”
First up on the list was Fox & Friends co-host Pete Hegseth, who Trump has somehow deemed fit to be promoted to defense secretary. As Meyers explained, Hegseth is someone who “was once flagged as a possible ‘insider threat’ by a fellow service member and who paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault while denying the charges.” (Not to mention the time he hit an innocent bystander with an axe on the streets of Manhattan.)
Before moving on to the next name on his list, Matt Gaetz, a gleeful Meyers called attention to a cue card mistake made by Wally Feresten. “Oh my god—that’s the most exciting thing that ever happened,” Meyers shouted. “Go back, Wally.”
At that point, the camera panned to Feresten, who held up the object of Meyers’ fascination: a blank cue card. It was a rare error that, while delighting the host, also seemed to have him a little worried.
“Didn’t take long for Trump to get to you, Wally,” Meyers joked. “Didn’t even wait to get sworn in and old Wally, ‘Oh, right away Mr. Trump. Whatever you need!’”
Feresten, who was enjoying the blunder as much as Meyers, apologized and said “it was a long weekend.” Which prompted Meyers to mockingly reply, “‘Oh, it was a long weekend. I had to do SNL, too.’”
While cue card errors on Late Night are rare, they do happen. Just last month, three flubs in a matter of two minutes of air time derailed the show a bit, as Meyers took time out of his written monologue to keep poking fun at Feresten.
But, as Meyers said on Monday night: “In this crazy new era we’re living in, we’re going to enjoy everything that goes wrong.”
