Late Night host Seth Meyers’ “Closer Look” segment quickly became one of the most erudite, yet comical, weekly critiques of the 2016 presidential election. From skewering Donald Trump’s seemingly random foreign policy decisions, to considering the details of the president-elect’s many controversial business ties, Late Night‘s aim has never strayed too far from the most pressing topic in the nation. Sure, Meyers and his team have ventured elsewhere to cover things like the media’s normalization of the so-called “alt-right,” but even that discussion eventually made its way back to Trump.
Thursday night’s edition of “Closer Look,” however, made no bones about the fact that the president-elect’s recent Carrier deal was its preferred subject. After all, subsequent criticism by Carrier officials and Trump’s own allies have sent the real estate mogul into a Twitter tailspin — not to mention the fact that his direct involvement in the matter mirrors President Barack Obama’s negotiations during the auto bailout:
“Despite its many flaws, there’s no denying the deal was politically popular. But for Republicans, what’s so surprising about this new policy of strong-arming companies into making business decisions is that the GOP has spent eight years calling Obama a ‘socialist’ for his economic policies. Remember how they reacted to the auto bailout, which saved as many as 1.5 million jobs… They accused him of coercion and hijacking capitalism. Well, as you might have guessed, they see the Carrier deal a little differently.”
In the same manner perfected by Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Meyers and the Late Night team juxtaposes clips from Fox News and conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the late 2000s with more recent ones, in which they heap endless praise on President-elect Trump. Or, as Limbaugh describes it, “This is just flat-out cool!”
Yet it wouldn’t be Late Night‘s “Closer Look” without a handful of fantastic quips and segments devoted entirely to not-nearly-as-serious matters, like the “fact” that one can hear Trump’s actual ass fall off whenever he lies to reporters. That, or the president-elect’s butchering the word “euphemism” to describe his watching an old clip of himself from the campaign trail promising to save Carrier jobs: “I never thought I made that promise… Then they played my statement, and I said ‘Carrier will never leave!’ But that was a euphenism [sic].”
“I’m not sure that’s how you ‘promounce’ that,” joked Meyers.
