Seth Meyers was baffled by a lot of moments from Donald Trump’s recent speeches on the economy—but most of all by Trump’s attempt to frame himself as the pro-working class candidate.
“Republicans want to make this election about the economy,” Meyers noted, “but they’re fighting uphill against the fact that voters see them as the party of Wall Street, country clubs, and corporate bosses.”
Case in point: Trump’s X interview with Elon Musk. As Meyers explained, “Trump and Vance have cynically tried to rebrand the GOP as a populist, pro-worker party, but Trump threw all that out the window on Monday during his live stream with Elon Musk, when he caused an uproar by praising Musk for firing employees who go on strike, which is against the law.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Meyers played the audio clip of Trump complimenting Musk for his anti-union practices, and quipped, “Only a genius chess-master Jedi wizard would do a conference call on a dying app with a South African vampire and, after a 40-minute technical delay, brag about how awesome it is to fire people during a campaign where the number one issue is jobs.”
“Seriously, just take a second to appreciate how disgusting this is,” Meyers said. “Two billionaire ghouls laughing with each other about firing workers just for exercising their legally protected right to strike.”
Meyers covered the legal trouble Trump’s now in for his comments, detailing how the United Auto Workers union has filed a complaint against him. Meyers also showed an interview of UAW leader Shawn Fain referring to Trump as a scab, and the Late Night host agreed wholeheartedly.
“It’s true, he’s a scab. He looks like someone picked at him and he didn’t heal properly,” Meyers joked.
He also showed some footage of Kamala Harris’s running mate Tim Walz speaking with a much more coherent pro-union message, and argued that Trump should be very concerned about his election chances.
“For two years Trump coasted against Joe Biden, but now he’s facing Harris,” Meyers said. “Now he actually has to campaign and that’s impossible because he can’t stay on message. He doesn’t even have a message to stick to, even if he tried.”
