Seth Meyers on Donald Trump’s DC police takeover: ‘This is all just theater’ | Late-night TV roundup

With a number of late-night hosts on vacation, Seth Meyers took a more in-depth have a look at the Trump administration’s deployment of the nationwide guard in Washington DC as a playbook for different cities.Seth Meyers“Donald Trump is at all times laser-focused on the essential stuff – no, not inflation, not healthcare, not jobs,” stated Seth Meyers on Wednesday night. “He’s centered on giving himself an award.”On Wednesday, Trump gave a usually rambling speech on the John F Kennedy Middle for the Performing Arts, the previously prestigious efficiency corridor that he took over early in his time period, purging the board and changing it with loyalists. Presenting the middle’s annual honorees, the president stated: “I at all times wished one, I used to be by no means capable of get one … I’d’ve taken it, if they might’ve referred to as me. I waited, and waited, and waited, after which stated, ‘To hell with it, I’ll grow to be chairman and I’ll give myself an honor.’ Subsequent yr we’ll honor Trump, OK?”“I like how everybody laughs at him, after which he says, ‘No, it’s true, really,’” the Late Night time host responded. “Second, he’s positively not joking about giving himself an award. That is the man who made a pretend Time journal cowl for himself to hold on his wall.“I’ve no hassle believing that he’d give himself a made-up award referred to as the ‘Kennedy Middle Lifetime Achievement Nobel Prize EGOT Award for Most Every little thing’,” Meyers added.Trump additionally introduced that he would host the annual Kennedy Middle Honors, and claimed he needed to be talked into it by his staff as a result of he has higher issues to do as president. “Effectively, I feel you deserve the award for greatest authentic screenplay, as a result of that’s positively a pretend dialog that didn’t occur,” Meyers laughed.Meyers then turned to the opposite main political story this week: Trump taking up the Washington DC Metropolitan police and deploying the nationwide guard to fight a made-up crime wave within the metropolis. Meyers famous that Republicans see this motion as a playbook for different cities, even though, in reality, violent crime charges are down in most main cities. The states with the best crime charges, similar to Louisiana and Mississippi, are largely managed by Republicans.“The precise has created this fantasy about crime in massive cities that isn’t true,” Meyers stated. “It’s a playbook that Republicans have used for many years, and Trump repeated it in 2024.“In a transparent signal that that is all simply theater, Trump is threatening to solely ship the nationwide guard to cities managed by Democrats,” calling the DC motion a “beacon for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and different locations everywhere in the nation”.“The parable of city crime is central to the fitting’s worldview,” Meyers famous. “For years, they principally made it their complete factor to be afraid of cities.” He pointed to the instance of the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, on Fox Information, complaining about crime charges on the New York Metropolis subway and likewise taking a shot at its cleanliness.Meyers obtained defensive. “Solely New Yorkers are allowed to shit on the New York Metropolis subway. I imply that figuratively and sadly typically actually,” he stated.“Trump doesn’t need to repair issues in massive cities, as a result of he loves issues in massive cities,” he concluded. “He loves issues wherever that may distract from his issues. And he positively has issues – his polling numbers aren’t nice, his Maga base is questioning his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and voters are beginning to suspect that the Trump administration is perhaps,” to cite Trump himself, “a criminal offense pot.”