As the DACA deadline looms, Seth Meyers finds the horror in Trump's easily manipulated racism
While his late-night colleagues went for the low-hanging yet irresistible comedic fruit that is the story that Donald Trump paid over a hundred grand to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to hush up the sexual encounter the two had just months after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to their son, Seth Meyers spent his “A Closer Look” segment taking, well, a closer look at the more pressing moral failing that is Trump’s ongoing scuttling of the DACA program. (But, it should be noted: Donald Trump apparently paid hush money to a porn star he slept with in advance of his presidential run.)
Meyers, noted that, despite a bipartisan agreement on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (which affects 800,000 or so people), Trump has done nothing but offer “erratic” and “childlike” responses to an impasse that, Meyers claims, is entirely of Trump’s own making. Even in the face of a looming Friday government shutdown due, in part, to the DACA logjam, Meyers explained how Trump’s belligerent waffling on immigration and border security (meaning his big-boy Game Of Thrones wall) seems to be a result of him being swayed by the last person who talks to him about it. You know, like, as Meyers puts it, “a toddler.” Showing clips of Trump first pronouncing his openness to sign whatever bill the bipartisan senate leaders come up with earlier in the week, Meyers reports how Trump immediately switched back to a hardline anti-DACA approach as soon as the meeting room cameras stopped rolling. Meyers feigned terror at the peal of thunder and flash of lightning accompanying the picture of White House adviser Stephen Miller appearing over his shoulder, but it’s hard not to sympathize, considering that the creepily lizard-like white supremacist Miller is suspected to be the chief architect of Trump’s stridently racist appeals to his rapidly shrinking base.
With DACA still stuck despite rare bipartisan efforts, the U.S. government mere days away from a budget shutdown, and an unstable president, as Meyers puts it, “with no principles and virtually no understanding of policy” acting at the whims of his most extreme advisers and calling not-white countries “shitholes,” the host made the case that the fallout from this latest debacle will be hard for Trump to survive. Of course, one might say that about the Access Hollywood tape. Or that time he mocked a disabled reporter. Or called Nazis “very fine people.” Or was facing sexual harassment and assault accusations from multiple women. Or endorsed an accused pedophile and genuine bigot as U.S. senator. Or called members of a particular ethnic group rapists, claimed everyone from a particular country had AIDS, or those from another lived in huts, or got caught lying a truly breathtaking number of times. Or, you know, reportedly slept with a porn star while his wife was recovering from childbirth and paid her $130,000 to keep it to herself. So we’ll see what things look like on Monday, should the government actually be open.
Oh, and Donald Trump probably paid hush money to a porn star.