Late-night host Seth Meyers thinks Donald Trump’s latest Oval Office obsession might say more than the president intended.
During Thursday’s “A Closer Look,” Meyers zeroed in on Trump’s increasingly bizarre tangents about office supplies—delivered as the U.S. barrels deeper into its third week of war with Iran.
“No, that’s not a story,” Meyers, 52, said after playing one of Trump’s digressions. “That’s a symptom,” he said, diagnosing the 79-year-old president.
The host reminded viewers of multiple moments where Trump veered off-script while addressing reporters, pivoting from geopolitics to what he described as “business stories” about pens and paper clips.
On Thursday, Trump launched into a rambling five-minute monologue about pens—fixating on cost and craftsmanship while holding up what he called a “beautiful” ballpoint. Gushing over the cheap deal he struck to acquire the pen that he had snagged for $5, despite claiming it would normally cost $1,000.
Meyers didn’t buy the premise—or the timing.
“Why, mid-war, is this guy so obsessed with office supplies?” he asked, noting that the conflict with Iran is costing the U.S. billions of dollars a day.
The pen tangent wasn’t a one-off.
On Monday, Trump delivered another extended aside—this time about the history of the paper clip, marveling at the simplicity of the design and how it left people wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’m sorry,” Meyers quipped, “did you just want to be president because you thought it would look good on your application to Staples?”
When reached for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle tore into Meyers, telling the Daily Beast in a statement, “Marble Mouth Meyers might be one of the dumbest and least talented television hosts in history.”
Diagnosing him with an illness often used by Trump and his allies to dismiss critics as irrational or obsessed, Ingles wrote, “He suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it has rotted his pea-sized brain. President Trump is the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in modern American history.”
The late-night host framed the fixation as especially jarring given the backdrop: a mounting international conflict, rising oil prices, and a growing U.S. military footprint in the region.
Iran has restricted access to the Strait of Hormuz—a critical waterway that transports roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply—driving up global energy costs. Meanwhile, the U.S. has continued airstrikes in the region, with at least 13 American service members reported killed and 200 troops injured since the start of the conflict.
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly downplayed the stakes, declaring on Thursday that the war was effectively “won in the first hour.”
Meyers seized on that claim, pairing it with the president’s fixation on office supplies.
“Woo! We won the war—pens for everyone!” he joked. “Just make sure the cheap kind. We’re not doing the high-end pens.”
Still, the host couldn’t shake the disconnect between Trump’s commentary and the moment.
At one point, Meyers said the pen story “felt like it went on for two days,” before circling back to what he saw as the bigger issue: a president seemingly more engaged with the cost of stationery than the cost of war.
He joked that, as the country fights a war most Americans oppose, “Don’t worry today, the president held a Cabinet meeting and spoke directly to the concerns that are on everyone’s mind,” cueing up Trump’s tangent about office supplies.
Trump has not ruled out deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran, even as he continues to insist the conflict is already under control—a contradiction Meyers didn’t let slide.
“If you won in the first hour,” he said, “why are you waiting until three weeks in to let us know?”
