“Hey everyone, welcome to Late Night casual Thursday,” Seth Meyers said at the top of his latest “A Closer Look” segment.
The host decided to forgo his customary suit given that the clip will only air on YouTube and not on NBC after that network decided to suspend production on his show and Jimmy Fallon’s effective immediately. The earliest those shows are expected to return is Monday, March 30th.
As Meyers explained, the plan was to put on the show as planned Thursday night and then go without an audience starting next Monday. “But basically, things are moving very fast,” he said, “and our guests, with great reason, decided that they didn’t feel right coming in and doing the show tonight.”
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But since they had already written an extended piece focused on President Donald Trump’s disaster of an address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic, Meyers decided he may as well deliver it.
After briefly touching on what viewers saw if they tuned in early to watch Trump’s speech on Fox, Meyers moved on to the “equally weird moment” that those who watched on C-SPAN got to see if they stayed through the end when that channel apparently forgot to turn off its feed.
“Now during this speech, you could see just how hard Trump was straining to read the TelePrompter and strike a somber tone,” Meyers said, comparing him to a “long haul trucker,” trying to stay awake. “So Trump’s face was frozen in this bizarre, forced grimace in a desperate attempt to project strength amid his flailing response to the pandemic,” he added, before showing the moment when the president thought he was off-camera, leaned back, unbuttoned his jacket and let out a casual, “OK…”
“Oh man! He reacted to his speech the way the rest of us reacted to it,” Meyers said. “Also, it was so weird to see Trump dropping the act of pretending to be a competent person. When he’s trying to act like a president, he tightens his face and narrows his eyes. And then when he thinks the cameras are off, he’s like a grandpa unbuckling his belt after a big meal.”
While “that did not inspire confidence,” Meyers said, “worse than that was the fact that Trump said multiple things in his speech that turned out to be flat-out wrong.”
The host ultimately ended what might be his last monologue for a while by saying, “Our government is massively failing us at time when the nation is looking for guidance. So now it’s up to the media, public health officials, workplaces and individuals to take this seriously, practice caution and lead where the president is failing.”
“And whenever Trump decides to lie or blurt out something dumb, we all just have to shrug it off and say…” he added, cutting once more to Trump: “OK…”
Or as the president was caught on mic saying before his speech, “Ah, fuck.”
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