{"id":68488,"date":"2025-08-14T20:27:25","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68488\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T20:27:25","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T20:27:25","slug":"seth-meyers-on-donald-trumps-dc-police-takeover-this-is-all-just-theater-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/68488\/","title":{"rendered":"Seth Meyers on Donald Trump\u2019s DC police takeover: \u2018This is all just theater\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

With several late-night hosts on holiday, Seth Meyers<\/a> took a closer look at the Trump administration\u2019s deployment of the national guard in Washington DC<\/a> as a playbook for other cities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump<\/a> is always laser-focused on the important stuff \u2013 no, not inflation, not healthcare, not jobs,\u201d said Seth Meyers on Wednesday evening. \u201cHe\u2019s focused on giving himself an award.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Trump gave a typically rambling speech<\/a> at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the formerly prestigious performance hall that he took over early in his term, purging the board and replacing it with loyalists. Presenting the center\u2019s annual honorees, the president said: \u201cI always wanted one, I was never able to get one \u2026 I would\u2019ve taken it, if they would\u2019ve called me. I waited, and waited, and waited, and then said, \u2018To hell with it, I\u2019ll become chairman and I\u2019ll give myself an honor.\u2019 Next year we\u2019ll honor Trump, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like how everyone laughs at him, and then he says, \u2018No, it\u2019s true, actually,\u2019\u201d the Late Night host responded. \u201cSecond, he\u2019s definitely not joking about giving himself an award. This is the guy who made a fake Time magazine cover for himself to hang on his wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no trouble believing that he\u2019d give himself a made-up award called the \u2018Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Nobel Prize EGOT Award for Most Everything\u2019,\u201d Meyers added.<\/p>\n

Trump also announced that he would host the annual Kennedy Center Honors, and claimed he had to be talked into it by his team because he has better things to do as president. \u201cWell, I think you deserve the award for best original screenplay, because that\u2019s definitely a fake conversation that did not happen,\u201d Meyers laughed.<\/p>\n

Meyers then turned to the other major political story this week: Trump taking over the Washington DC Metropolitan police and deploying the national guard to combat a made-up crime wave in the city. Meyers noted that Republicans see this action as a playbook for other cities, despite the fact that, in truth, violent crime rates are down in most major cities. The states with the highest crime rates, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, are largely controlled by Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right has created this myth about crime in big cities that isn\u2019t true,\u201d Meyers said. \u201cIt\u2019s a playbook that Republicans have used for decades, and Trump repeated it in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a clear sign that this is all just theater, Trump is threatening to only send the national guard to cities controlled by Democrats,\u201d calling the DC action a \u201cbeacon for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other places all over the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe myth of urban crime is central to the right\u2019s worldview,\u201d Meyers noted. \u201cFor years, they basically made it their whole thing to be afraid of cities.\u201d He pointed to the example of the US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, on Fox News, complaining about crime rates on the New York City subway and also taking a shot at its cleanliness.<\/p>\n

Meyers got defensive. \u201cOnly New Yorkers are allowed to shit on the New York City subway. I mean that figuratively and sadly sometimes literally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump doesn\u2019t want to fix problems in big cities, because he loves problems in big cities,\u201d he concluded. \u201cHe loves problems anywhere that can distract from his problems. And he definitely has problems \u2013 his polling numbers are not great, his Maga base is questioning his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and voters are starting to suspect that the Trump administration might be,\u201d to quote Trump himself, \u201ca crime pot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With several late-night hosts on holiday, Seth Meyers took a closer look at the Trump administration\u2019s deployment of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-68488","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\/68488","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=68488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}