Seth Meyers Calls Out Networks for Letting Trump ‘Repeat His Lies’ in Primetime

When Seth Meyers left for vacation just before Christmas, the partial government shutdown hadn’t even started yet. Two weeks later, it is one of the longest shutdowns in U.S. history.

“There is no sign that the government shutdown will end any time soon,” the Late Night host said in his first show back on Monday. “And now the president wants a primetime address to repeat his lies.”

For the next several minutes, Meyers broke down Donald Trump’s failure to do something as basic as keep the government open for the third time in his first two years as president. “The government shutdown that’s now in its third week isn’t just a political fight over a useless border wall that Trump repeatedly said Mexico would pay for,” he explained. “It’s having real-world consequences for millions of people.”

After mocking Trump’s various justifications for his $5 billion border wall, Meyers arrived at Trump’s upcoming Tuesday night address to the nation. “Even in his tweet announcing the speech, Trump lied,” the host said.

“First of all, just because Trump wants to address the nation doesn’t mean networks should air it,” Meyers said. “Otherwise, they’re just passing on his lies unfiltered. They should either reject him outright, or if he insists on speaking in primetime, make him do it as a contestant on The Masked Singer.”

“Second, there’s no national security crisis at the border,” he continued. “Trump and his aides keep repeating the debunked lie that terrorists are sneaking in from Mexico.” As a prime example, Meyers pointed to statements made by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and instantly refuted by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this past weekend.

“Look at her face,” Meyers said of Sanders. “She has literally never heard a reporter use the words ‘I studied up on this’ before. That’s her ‘oh shit’ face, she cannot believe she is being fact-checked on Fox News.”

“Trump is totally incoherent and incapable of telling the truth,” Meyers concluded. “He shouldn’t get to address the nation just to repeat his lies.”

After Meyers taped his show Monday afternoon, each of the three big broadcast networks—including his longtime employer NBC—confirmed that they would carry Trump’s comments live Tuesday night. That is despite the fact that four years earlier, when President Obama made a speech to the nation about his immigration policy agenda, the networks refused to interrupt their regularly scheduled programming.