It’s certainly still a mess out there, and while we all wait for things to return to some semblance of normality, Donald Trump is still doing his daily press briefings, which are carried live by most news networks. And in a new edition of “A Closer Look” on Wendesday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” Meyers had some harsh words for those networks.
Midway through the segment, the show played a clip from Trump’s Tuesday briefing, in which Trump appeared to struggle to read what he was supposed to say. Meyers mocked this clip at length, comparing it to a scene from a movie or TV show in which a man goes on a date wearing an earpiece so his friends can tell him what to say — but the earpiece cuts out and the guy starts mumbling incoherently.
And then turned his guns on the TV channels who enable this whole deal.
“That’s the guy news networks have decided to air unfiltered during a national emergency. The guy who can’t even read his own script,” Meyers said. “If that’s the kind of content you want, cable networks, just take a live feed of my grandpa at his next eye exam.”
Meyers then called out CNN specifically for its harsh on-screen text criticizing how Trump handled the briefings, which he said don’t matter when they’re still showing him do his thing anyway.
“And by the way, it doesn’t make it better when you give it a negative chyron like CNN did on Monday with ‘Angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session.’ You know what else turned that into a propaganda session? Pointing your camera at it. Before you showed up it was just ‘crazy lawn man does his thing.’ You can’t air a propaganda session and criticize it. It’s like if MTV had aired ‘Jersey Shore’ with the disclaimer ‘change the channel this show sucks,’” Meyers joked dryly, before shifting to a discussion of Monday’s briefing, which featured Trump rolling out what very much looked like a campaign ad.
“And that is what it was, a propaganda session. In fact, the White House edited together a campaign-style video highlighting Trump’s various statements about the crisis, and Trump actually had people inside your government, paid with your tax dollars, make that video.”
It’s worth noting that CNN cut away from its live feed of Trump’s briefing on Monday when he played that video. The network does still cover the briefings.
Meyers did shout out Paula Reid from CBS News for calling Trump out for the video later in that briefing.
You can check out the entire 13-minute “A Closer Look” segment from Wdnesday’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers” in the video up at the top of this post.