As a “judge,” you would think Fox News host Jeanine Pirro would know the difference between a “kingmaker” and a “kingpin,” but during an interview with former President Donald Trump over the weekend, she mixed them up. Neither she nor Trump seemed to notice.
But Seth Meyers did, sharing the clip with his viewers during Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment on Late Night. After Pirro asked Trump if he sees himself as a “kingpin for elections going forward,” he replied, “If I endorse somebody, they win,” inventing a false statistic that claims he is 148-and-2 on successful endorsements.
“Jeanine, I’m pretty sure you meant to say ‘kingmaker,’ which is a good thing, not ‘kingpin,’ which is usually reserved for criminals,” Meyers responded. “That’s a very revealing clip. I’d say it’s Freudian, but with you it’s probably Franzian.”
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Then, in an apparent effort to prove Pirro’s inadvertent point, the host went on to break down Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection and prevent the committee investigating the attack from obtaining relevant White House records.
“And there’s an obvious reason Trump wants to keep those records hidden,” Meyers said. “Trump and his cronies had a detailed plan for overturning election results and they tried to execute that plan. And they almost succeeded. It wasn’t an impulse or a whim, it was a plot.”
“The GOP has embraced Trumpism fully and completely, whether they brag about it or try to play coy,” he concluded, alluding to Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin. “He sowed a violent insurrection to overthrow democracy, but Republicans are still on board. Which means he’ll almost certainly try to do it again, making him a”—in Pirro’s words—“kingpin for elections going forward.”
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