In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump famously—and repeatedly—told voters how he surrounded himself with “the best people.” In the five years since, Americans have looked on as Trump and many of his closest colleagues have been investigated, arrested, and even jailed. Seth Meyers, for one, is not surprised.
Meyers dedicated Monday night’s “A Closer Look” segment to the MAGA crime family, with particular attention paid to Matt Gaetz, Joel Greenberg and Rudy Giuliani. He kicked the segment off by noting the number of Trump or Trump-adjacent associates who have stumbled into legal troubles in the last few years:
“Maybe it’s a coincidence, but the MAGA crowd seems to have a lot of criminals in it. I don’t want to make generalizations, but there are more criminals—or alleged criminals—in Trump’s inner circle than there are in a motorcycle gang or a Hollywood PTA meeting.”
That so many of Trump’s associates have been arrested, jailed, and/or convicted (with or without a pardon) speaks to the fact that they might not be very good at crime. Case in point: Greenberg, Gaetz’s longtime pal and so-called “wingman” who was in court on Monday and pleaded guilty to six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. As part of Greenberg’s plea deal, he promised to fully cooperate with the prosecution. This, of course, is bad news for Gaetz, the Florida congressman who is already at the center of a handful of allegations and sex scandals—the latest being that he snorted coke with an escort at a wild party following a pro-Trump rally in 2019, where Nestor’s daddy pumped up the crowd with a speech.
Greenberg, of course, was the recipient of those late-night Venmo transactions from Gaetz back in 2018—the one where Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 and Greenberg then sent that exact same amount of money out to a trio of young women using “Tuition” and “School” as the explanations of the cash. “It would have been less suspicious to just use a bunch of eggplant emojis,” Meyers deadpanned.
But Gaetz wasn’t Meyers’s only target: In addition to pointing to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, Meyers turned his attention to one of his favorite nincompoops, Rudy Giuliani. According to Meyers, who has never missed an opportunity to break out his Rudy impression, Trump has been ignoring Giuliani’s requests for help while he’s being investigated by the FBI for his shady Ukraine shenanigans. The former president is being pressured to “hang Giuliani out to dry in his hour of need.” Meyers had some thoughts on this:
“If anyone needs to be hung out to dry, it’s Rudy Giuliani. He always looks like he fell into the city aquarium and got squirted with squid ink. Second, I’d imagine every hour in Rudy’s life is an hour of need. The dude butt-dials reporters, got tricked by Borat, and doesn’t know the difference between up and down.” (That clip, at 5:43, is worth watching on repeating.)
According to Meyers, if Giuliani is truly surprised that Trump isn’t standing by and up for him, that’s on Rudy. “What did Rudy think was going to happen? His client is famous for not paying his bills and turning on everyone around him.”
Giuliani is reportedly asking Trump to issue a “strongly worded” statement that confirms Rudy’s interactions with Ukrainian officials were all on the up and up and on behalf of the then-president—which Trump is reluctant to do. “Rudy’s like a hitman who thinks it will help his case if the guy who hired him talks to the cops,” Meyers said.
You can watch the full segment above.
