Seth Meyers could not be more excited to be broadcasting his Late Night show from Washington, D.C. all week, with less than 30 days to go until Election Day. He popped up on Meet The Press on Sunday, The Lead with Jake Tapper on Monday, and now, ahead of tonight’s show, he dropped his “closer look” at Trump’s most disgusting revelation yet—and the debate meltdown that followed—a full three hours before it will air on TV.
As the host said near the top of his show, this was the week that the “Trump train collided head-on with the Access Hollywood bus.” He described the decade-old footage of Trump bragging to Billy Bush about grabbing women “by the pussy” as more familiar to most Americans than Frozen is to five-year-olds.
“So a man who is this close to the highest office in the land now occupies the lowest office in the land: the pervert on the bus,” Meyers said. The host also went hard after his fellow NBC employee Billy Bush, who he said “somehow passed Jeb as worst performing Bush in 2016.” Noting that NBC has suspended Bush for his role in the video, Meyers added, “There is now a higher standard for host of the third hour of the Today show than there is for Republican nominee for president.”
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On the Speaker of the House, who now says he won’t “defend” Trump but also won’t rescind his endorsement, Meyers quipped, “Paul Ryan is so spineless at this point they carry him to and from events in a bucket.”
Eventually, Meyers moved on to Sunday night’s debate, during which Trump repeatedly used the phrase “locker room talk” to describe his behavior on the tape. “First of all, no it’s not. That’s not the way men in locker rooms talk,” he said. “Second of all, and this is the problem, Trump treats the entire world like the inside of a locker room.” Trump also “overreached” with this line: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”
“And that great respect for women was on great display in the way Trump lurked behind Hillary Clinton on the debate stage every time she answered a question,” Meyers said. Or as he imagined Trump defending it, a “locker room walk.”
But even “more dangerous” than any of Trump’s entitled misogyny in Meyers’ view was how he promised to “throw his opponent in jail” if he wins. “Trump finally revealed his inner dictator,” the host said, “which probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given that he’s repeatedly praised other dictators who jail political opponents,” from Vladimir Putin to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-un.
Meyers left viewers with the image of Trump absent-mindedly wandering off the stage as Clinton answered a question about Obamacare. “What does he think is back there,” he asked, “the ash heap of history?”
