
Donald Trump’s latest attack on a late-night host shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following him and/or late night over the past few years. But it does raise the question: What specifically got his goat this time?
As we reported earlier today, Trump railed against Seth Meyers in an early-morning Truth Social Tuesday, calling him a “moron,” “dumb and untalented,” and “merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.” Arguing that Late Night with Seth Meyers and other shows engage in “political hits” rather than entertainment, Trump declared that NBC parent company Comcast should “pay a BIG price.”
While Trump described that he “got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night,” the timing of his post—1:24am ET—would suggest that Trump was watching last night’s broadcast. So if that was indeed the case, what sparked Trump’s ire?
As it often does, last night’s Late Night featured plenty of content critical of the president-elect, but two segments in particular would seem to be most likely.
The first—the show’s signature segment, “A Closer Look”—saw Meyers gleefully tackle infighting within the MAGA movement, including a reported showdown between Trump cronies Steve Bannon and Elon Musk.
“We know very little about what Trump’s second term will be like, given that he has no fixed principals or core beliefs or coherent ideas or constructive solutions or plans or proposals or policies or values or thoughts of any kind,” Meyers said at the top of the segment.
“He’s basically an intellectual Roomba,” he went on. “He goes in one direction until he bumps into something and then he just goes off into another direction.” Meyers later wrapped the segment by illustrating that point, dubbing Trump soundbites over a video of a Roomba.
Another possibility is that Trump took issue with one of Late Night‘s guests last night: MSNBC host Alex Wagner.
MSNBC (or “MSDNC” as he likes to call it) is another favorite target of the president-elect, and as it happens, Wagner and Meyers were discussing Trump’s criticism of L.A.’s wildfire response in the minutes just before his post went up on Truth Social.
Lending credence to this theory, Trump specifically called out MSNBC in his post last night, writing of Comcast: “remember, they also run MSDNC. “
We’ll likely have to wait until Wednesday night to see if Meyers responds to Trump’s insults on air. (The show pretapes its Tuesday night episodes on Mondays, so tonight’s episode was already in the can before Trump’s post this morning.)
Unfortunately, he more than likely won’t address it in his show tonight because Late Night tapes both his Monday and Tuesday shows on Mondays, so it is more likely that Seth will address it in his Wednesday show.
Grace, thanks for the reminder. We’ve updated the post.
Trump’s reaction was mainly to the Friday Jan 10th show https://youtu.be/ZCVdKne7yVA?si=dbOlZk9K5Hmnvo7L