It can be tricky to keep track of everything Trump gets up to on a day to day basis, especially when reports are conflicting between what he says, what the White House says, and what trusted news sources say based on conversations with government officials. So it’s helpful that Seth Meyers decided to recap this past week for everybody in Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment, even if trying to pack a week’s worth of Trump news into 10 minutes or so is a nigh impossible task.
The most important moments are of course at the end of the clip, as Seth tries to process his feelings about the latest breaking news that Trump reportedly revealed classified secrets in a meeting with the Russians.
In addition to the extended segment on all the Trump news, Seth also welcomed Ben Sasse to the show to help him parse through exactly what’s happening with the Russia news and the Senator was more measured than you could ever hope for. Especially considering that due to the timing of the show’s taping he was pretty much just catching up with The Washington Post‘s report on Trump’s potential disclosure of major state secrets.
In the interview, Sasse tries to reasonably work through the situation and walk the audience through what exactly is happening politically even if everyone is jumping to conclusions about the seeming insanity of the situation. The Junior Senator from Nebraska made sure that people were keeping a few things in mind, namely that there are always a lot of conflicting reports flying around and to wait for the dust to settle a bit as well as that there is a difference between illegality and imprudence. In this particular situation it is the level of the latter that is being debated not the former.
Oh, and also that the big deal with this particular event is that the classified secrets were potentially revealed to Russia. Like, that Russia. Which is obviously not great for the concept of democracy or allies. A good set of reminders for people to think of while Western Democracy seemingly takes hit after hit after hit.
