How does that old saying go? Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it, but those who attempt to learn about history from Donald Trump might be out $100 and think Frederick Douglass is still alive? Yeah, that sounds about right. On Monday night, Seth Meyers dug into the talk surrounding the sluggish ticket sales for Trump and Bill O’Reilly’s so-called “History Tour,” where they’ll undoubtedly chat about fake news and the rigged 2020 election. But will anybody be listening?
Quoting a Politico article from last week, Meyers explained on Late Night with Seth Meyers how the not-so-dynamic duo are having trouble moving advance tickets for their shows, a claim which O’Reilly is vehemently denying to the point where he’s threatening a lawsuit against the article’s author. The story made specific mention of a show at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, which has the capacity to host 20,000 people. According to Meyers, a box office employee of the arena (who opted to be quoted anonymously) said there are still a lot of tickets left for the December event and that “We have concerts that are doing a lot better than this.” Meyers’ response?
“I’m sure they do. First of all, it’s in Orlando. There’s a wealth of theme parks. Why go to a Trump/O’Reilly History Tour when you can learn more about U.S. history at the Hall of Presidents or even Space Mountain? Hell, even SeaWorld could probably be a better use of your time… Who the hell wants to go see a so-called ‘History Tour’ with a disgraced former cable news host and a man was just quoted as having said: ‘I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
Let’s put that into context: One of the few sitting presidents to lose a reelection bid not only believes that he could beat both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in a presidential election, but has actually spent time pondering what would happen if Washington and Lincoln were brought back from the dead? (Though, from his quote, it’s not completely clear whether he knows that Lincoln was assassinated more than 150 years ago.) Meyers said it best when he described a history tour with Trump as “the opposite of a Ken Burns documentary.”
You can watch the full clip above.
