The response from pro-gun conservatives to the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida earlier this month has provided no shortage of material for late night hosts, with gun-focused political chatter dominating the talk shows since the shooting occurred on Valentine’s Day.
On Monday, Seth Meyers spent an extended portion of his show recapping it in a segment called “A Closer Look,” from Donald Trump’s plan to arm teachers to conservative pundits taking shots at the anti-gun survivors of the massacre to, of course, Trump’s comment on Monday about how he’d have “run in there” had he been present for the shooting.
In a meeting with state governors, Trump said that “I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon” while discussing the actions of the sheriff’s deputy who was onsite during the shooting, but stayed outside. Meyers found that quote to be easy to mock.
“Nothing about that is believable. Forget running into a school to confront a shooter, I don’t believe you’d run anywhere, period. You can’t even be bothered to walk down a flight of stairs,” Meyers said while playing a clip of Trump standing on an escalator as it moved him downwards. “Then again, I said before that I didn’t think you’d run and man did I get burned.”
Meyers then compared Trump unfavorably to Liam Neeson in the movie “Taken”: “There’s really nothing worse than a fake tough guy. Trump lives in a fantasy world where he’s some kind of action movie star who’d rush into danger and save the day. I’m sorry, but you’re not exactly Liam Neeson. If you’d been in the movie ‘Taken’ they would have had to change the name.”
At this point the shot cut to an image of the “Taken” poster altered to show Trump in Neeson’s place, with a new title of “My Daughter’s Gone, Let’s Move On.” Meyers then did an impression of Trump taking the call from the kidnappers from the movie, which was the subject of memes for years thanks to Neeson’s concluding line from that conversation: “I will find you, and I will kill you.”
“All right, so you have her?” Meyers’ Trump said. “Okay, thanks for the call.”
During his monologue, which you can watch below, Meyers also had this to say about that Trump quote: “I gotta say I find it hard to believe Trump would voluntarily run inside a place of education. The only way you would run inside is if a reporter asked you a question outside.”
Another highlight of the 11-minute segment was when Meyers went over a Twitter exchange between conservative Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham and Sarah Chadwick, one of the teenage survivors who has been outspoken about the need for gun reform in America.
Chadwick made a lot of noise last week when she tweeted that: “We should change the name of AR-15s to ‘Marco Rubio’ because they are so easy to buy,” referring to how adamantly against sweeping reform of the nation’s gun laws after having received millions in donations from the NRA.
“After that tweet, Fox News host Laura Ingraham quoted Chadwick’s line on Twitter and added ‘HOW TEENS SPEAK TO AND ABT ADULTS,’ calling her ‘Stoneman Douglas sophomore Sarah Chadwick,” Meyers said. “Which prompted this response from Chadwick: ‘I’m a junior.’ Laura Ingraham, what is wrong with you? Don’t go after teenagers on social media, you saw what happened to Marco Rubio. So in short, Marco Rubio might be easy to buy, but Laura Ingraham is easy to own.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63FD5odrOUc