On Wednesday night, after a terrifying day in which a violent, hundreds-strong mob of treasonous, armed Trump fanatics stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., assaulting police, forcing congresspeople to hide, and occupying the building for hours, Seth Meyers—like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel before him—opened his Late Night show with a somber monologue.
“As everyone knows right now, today was a day filled with surreal and horrifying scenes of armed insurrection in an attempt to destroy—through violent means—American democracy. It was a sequence of events unseen in the modern history of this nation, and the images should be seared into our collective consciousness for the rest of our lives,” explained Meyers.
He continued: “I think it’s important, as the first draft of history is being written and as we’re all processing what we witnessed today, to be as plainspoken and clear-eyed as possible. What we saw today was a violent insurgency and attempt to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States. And it was incited, directed, and encouraged by the president, Donald Trump, and more than a few members of the Republican Party and right-wing media.”
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Indeed, a number of Republican senators—including Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—as well as the right-wing media, such as Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, have been fueling Trump’s tyrannical power-grab after losing the 2020 presidential election by a substantial margin (74 electoral votes and over 7 million popular votes). And these seditious criminals and white nationalists took it upon themselves to terrorize the Capitol, brandishing Confederate battle flags and even replacing the American flag with a Trump flag.
“As we were all watching these stunning scenes of violence, and sedition, and insurrection against our democracy, anxiously hoping for a restoration of calm and order, the president of the United States told the traitors and the mob, ‘We love you, you’re very special, I know how you feel,’” said Meyers, referencing a lie-filled video by Trump that was removed from social media platforms. “And he does. He knows how they feel because he’s spent four years telling them in great and odious detail how they should feel. So we should be shocked, but we can’t be surprised. The president wanted this, he directed it, supported it, he incited it, and encouraged it. He told that same crowd just hours earlier that they should never concede; that they should show strength and fight.”
Then came the kicker: “There must be consequences for stoking violence and sedition—otherwise we’re gonna see it again,” argued Meyers. “And as for Trump, the only way our democracy is going to survive this harrowing moment is if he’s immediately removed from office by either the cabinet or the Congress and prosecuted. Anything less is tacit permission to continue to use his office, and his influence after he leaves office, to foment sedition and dismantle democracy.”
