From Late Night with Seth Meyers July 18, 2024
(Another installment of the Transcript Project at CofA Blog, documenting our strange times in print. Comedians always get it best.)
TRANSCRIPT:
00:00
Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president tonight after a week in which his running mate, J.D. Vance, and the rest of the GOP lied brazenly about his track record as president. For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look." [ Cheers and applause ]
 |
| Seth Meyers, NBC |
We taped this in the
afternoon, so we don't know exactly what Trump said in his acceptance speech, but
we do know what the overriding theme of the Republican National Convention has
been so far -- under President Trump, everything was awesome.
-Our economy is not
nearly as strong as it was four years ago.
-Under Trump, we
prospered. We were richer.
-President Trump
handed Biden a booming economy.
-Under Trump, we had
a booming economy.
-Under President
Trump, we had the greatest economy in our lifetime.
-Under President Trump, we had the strongest economy in history.
Yes, we all remember the halcyon days of 2020, when the economy was soaring and toilet paper was plentiful, and we weren't all wearing T-shirts on our faces and wiping our mail down with Clorox and filming our TV shows at home without our hair and makeup teams, which left us looking like a ghost haunting a Dickensian orphanage. Yehhh! I looked like I have seconds left to find the key in a Saw movie. [ Laughter ] I look like Data from Star Trek after he drowned. I look like a teenage lesbian's passport photo. What? [ Laughter ] That doesn't even -- That one doesn't even make sense. [ Cheers and applause ]
Trump, of course,
oversaw a net job loss and a contracting economy where inequality soared and
corporate profits exploded.
But the only thing more predictable than Republicans brazenly lying about Trump's record is Republicans flip-flopping to support him, like former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who just months ago said Trump was diminished and unhinged.
Now, Haley said
this. “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement. Period.”
Wow, exclamation point. Who could have seen this coming, question mark. Open parentheses, eyeroll, closed parentheses. I'm just [bleep] --I'm just F-asterisk- asterisk-asterisk-ing with you, comma, we all saw it coming, period.
***
Now, the Republican National Convention has been full of awkward moments, from Matt Gaetz heckling Kevin McCarthy to Mike Johnson fleeing the podium when his teleprompter failed.
But even when the teleprompter works, the speeches are so weird. Like this speech last night from Don Jr's partner, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Kimberly Guilfoyle- [SHOUTING] America, this is your moment. Will you stand for President Trump? Rise up! Rise up! Ladies and gentlemen, lovers of liberty and freedom and the American dream, this is our last chance to make America great again!
Seth: Why does she sound like she's doing a rendition of Braveheart at a Long Island middle school?
KG- "They could take our lives, but they'll never take our beautiful marble fountains!"
Seth- As we've said for many years now, MAGA weirdos also have weird little obsessions, like increasing your sperm count by exposing your testicles to red light therapy or getting mad that the green M&M isn't hot anymore because she stopped wearing high heels, when in fact, she's hotter now because she's not trying too hard, and she can walk through the Meatpacking district without getting her heel caught between the cobblestones.
Both of those things are real things that Tucker Carlson devoted time to on his primetime Fox News show before he was fired, and now he's center stage at the Republican National Convention.
He was scheduled to speak on Thursday night, and he's been hanging out with Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, where for some reason, he was the only one dressed like he thought the convention was being held at a yacht club in the Hamptons.
You're in Milwaukee. If you ever have been there before, you know the dress code is Lenny and Squiggy. [ Laughter ]
I do tip my cap to their audacity. They claim to be the tribunes of the working class while looking like a human pocket square. I'm surprised Trump doesn't have Gaetz tucked into the front of his jacket.
But that is the modern GOP right there, Tucker and fellow red-pilled rich guy Elon Musk were reportedly instrumental in convincing Trump to pick Vance, a Yale-educated venture capitalist who has jettisoned virtually everything he ever believed about the Republican Party and Donald Trump.
Just to give you an idea how much Vance has debased himself to crawl to his perch as Trump's number two, here's some of the stuff he had to say about Trump before he got into politics.
-In 2016, he suggested Trump might be America's Hitler, called him cultural heroin, and referred to him as noxious.
“I'm a Never Trump guy. I never liked him.” –Vance
Seth: This is what I don't get about Republicans. If someone spent years comparing me to Hitler and heroin and then turned on a dime and started sucking up to me the second they wanted a job, I don't think I could ever get over it….
6:16
And now here's how low Vance has fallen eight years later as Trump's running mate.
Vance- President Trump obviously is one of the most successful real estate executives in the -- in the history of our country. Of course, the Trump name became synonymous with -- with luxury and with beauty in the real estate world.
Seth- Is it though, really? I've seen this picture of him at a breakfast buffet. That looks like the Spirit Airlines second-class lounge. Here's how you can tell the Trump name is not synonymous with luxury.
The most luxurious thing about this photo is that there are not one, but two bottles of ketchup.
Ooh la la!
Is this Palm Beach or Versailles?
And I like how they're separated. That's Trump's idea of luxury. He's got the ketchup bottles positioned like they're guards outside Buckingham Palace.
But that transformation is a microcosm of the Trumpification of the GOP. Trump did not singlehandedly change the conservative movement. He's very much an outgrowth of decades of reactionary politics and many other systemic failures. But he did help shape the party into a cult of personality by instituting a policy of ritual humiliation obedience.
Remember eight years ago when Ted Cruz engaged in what at the time was considered an act of courage by refusing to endorse Trump at the RNC and issuing this plea?
Cruz- Stand and speak and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
Seth- Well, here's Cruz eight years later at the Republican National Convention.
Cruz- God bless Donald J. Trump. [ Crowd cheers ]
Seth- "Vote your conscience” or have your conscience surgically removed by a team of scientists to make you incapable of feeling shame and then say, 'God bless Donald Trump.'
Also, side note -- what is it with guys who went from hardcore Trump critics to subservient Trump toadies growing beards?
It's like they said, "If I endorsed him, I could never look myself in the mirror again," and then realize, "Ph, but maybe it won't be too bad if I change the way I look." [ Laughter ] "Oh, look at you! You're a different guy. You're a different guy. You're not that guy. You're a different guy. You got a big old beard." [Applause ]
That's the story of the GOP's transformation in the last eight years. That's how you end up with a party that claims to stand for working people, but somehow attracted the support of the world's weirdest billionaires.
And it's how you end up with a vice presidential nominee who says stuff like this.
Vance [years earlier]- We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.
Vance- The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
Seth- I don't know what's worse, him saying childless cat ladies or Tucker Carlson going... [you've got to watch video] [ Laughter ] They're just -- These guys are so weird.
If you saw these two having this conversation at a party, you'd turn to your spouse and say, "One of us needs to pretend to have catastrophic diarrhea so we can get the hell out of here."
Also, by the way, I got three kids, and I may not have a cat, but I got a dog that's the size of a cat.
I'll side with the cat ladies any day over the party of bosses and rich guys, the party who's made it harder to unionize and repealed child labor laws and poured trillions into the pockets of the wealthiest people in America.
They want you to believe that the corporate oligarchs, whose taxes they cut whenever they get a hold of power, are actually secretly in league with the childless cat ladies of the world.
I mean, [bleep] off.
If Republicans had a real agenda to run on, they would, but they don't. They don't. So they're left to lie about Trump's actual record as president
And that's been the theme of the Republican convention this week. Instead of telling you the truth about Trump's presidency, they have to pretend the year was awesome for everyone in...
Kimberly Guilfoyle Shouting- America!
This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
English (United
States)
All From Late Night
with Seth Meyers
***
Weblogged by Kay
Ebeling
City of Angels Blog
Watch Late Night video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCrZiW4BaVM
AI generated transcript,
so not perfect but getting better every day
-ke
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