{"id":185492,"date":"2025-10-02T16:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/185492\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T16:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:59:08","slug":"seth-meyers-on-government-shutdown-will-have-repercussions-for-pretty-much-everyone-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/185492\/","title":{"rendered":"Seth Meyers on government shutdown: \u2018Will have repercussions for pretty much everyone\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts discuss the US government shutdown<\/a> and Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s threat to send the US military<\/a> into major American cities.<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

On Wednesday\u2019s Late Night, Seth Meyers<\/a> examined the first government shutdown since 2018, which \u201cwill have repercussions for pretty much everyone\u201d \u2013 one estimate puts the number of furloughed employees at 750,000, at the cost of $400m a day in lost compensation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA government shutdown is obviously not great,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich is why the president should get congressional leaders in a room together and hash out a deal. I mean, that\u2019s obvious to everyone, including this guy back in 2011.\u201d Meyers then played a clip of Trump blasting Barack Obama for overseeing a government shut, calling it a \u201ctremendously negative mark on the president of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

The shutdown fight is, in part, over healthcare; Democrats want to renew subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, while Republicans are claiming that they want to give healthcare to undocumented immigrants, which fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked.<\/p>\n

It will not, however, impact Trump\u2019s supposed plan to send federal troops to US cities. In a speech on Tuesday, Trump called this effort the \u201cwar from within\u201d and said \u201cwe should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I hear a speech like this, two thoughts occur to me, and they\u2019re hard to hold in my head at the same time,\u201d said Meyers. \u201cOn the one hand, it\u2019s a menacing authoritarian threat to use the military to suppress dissent and crack down on military opponents. It represents an existential threat to our freedoms and our constitutional order. And two, he sounds like one million years old. He sounds like he accidentally chugged an entire bottle of Nyquil thinking it was Dayquil.\u201d<\/p>\n

In all seriousness, Meyers wondered, \u201cwhy should any opposition party willingly fund a government that is pledging to use the military against them? If Trump wants to reach an agreement with Democrats, maybe he should stop threatening them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

The shutdown is happening \u201cbecause we don\u2019t have funding to pay the federal workers\u201d, said Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> during his weeklong stop in Brooklyn. \u201cTrump really is running the country like it\u2019s one of his businesses. He said he would!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust to give you some perspective, the government being shut down is even worse than when it\u2019s up and running,\u201d he explained. \u201cRepublicans would like you to believe that it\u2019s the Democrats that shut the government down, but the bill they wanted the Democrats to sign would knock out about 15 million Americans from health insurance. If this bill passes, your health insurance premiums could go up 75%. So there was no way the Democrats could vote for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like going to dinner, and the waiter says you must order lasagna, the chef made it today, and a bunch of you are going to get food poisoning from it,\u201d he added. \u201cBut if you don\u2019t eat it, you\u2019ve ruined the meal. That\u2019s the Garfield version of what\u2019s going on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

On the Late Show, Stephen Colbert<\/a> looked for upsides to the shutdown. \u201cMaybe this is a good thing? The government hasn\u2019t been working that great lately,\u201d he said. \u201cWho knows why? Maybe somebody got the government wet, you know? Let\u2019s unplug it for a while and then plug it back in, see if it reboots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that doesn\u2019t work, maybe toss it in a bag of rice, leave it there for a couple hours,\u201d he continued. \u201cIf that doesn\u2019t work, we\u2019ll just throw it away and buy a new one with a better camera and a functioning president.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effects of the shutdown were already apparent \u2013 TSA air traffic controllers were already working without pay on Wednesday, as were food safety inspectors. \u201cOh, that\u2019s just what you want: disgruntled people in charge of your food safety,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s military deployments to major cities will continue, however, as will his immigration crackdown and deportations. \u201cCome on, why are we keeping only the unpopular parts of government?\u201d Colbert asked. \u201cYou don\u2019t see Disney launching a new Star Wars spinoff called Baby Jar Jar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daily Show<\/p>\n

And on the Daily Show, guest host Ronny Chieng called the shutdown \u201ca classic dispute between the parties: Democrats say that the government should help pay for healthcare, and Republicans say \u2018that\u2019s what GoFundMe is for!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut because Republicans need Democratic votes to keep the government open, the two parties have to come together,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo this moment calls for a serious and sober-minded leader, like President Trump, to work with the other side with dignity and mutual respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, naturally, Trump posted an AI-generated video depicting Jeffries, who is Black, wearing a sombrero and mustache, while Chuck Schumer said, in a fake voice, that Democrats had no voters left \u201cbecause of our woke trans bullshit\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the fuck did I just watch?\u201d Chieng wondered. \u201cTrump is making fun of a black man for being Mexican? It\u2019s almost too confusing to be racist. It\u2019s like putting a headdress on the Twin Towers. Like, I don\u2019t even know what you\u2019re trying to say? I don\u2019t have the racist math skills to solve this equation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought I\u2019d say this, but Donald Trump, can you be better at racism?\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts discuss the US government shutdown and Donald Trump\u2019s threat to send the US military into major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-185492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}