{"id":501719,"date":"2026-02-26T22:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501719\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T22:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T22:19:10","slug":"seth-meyers-on-trumps-state-of-the-union-address-a-vehicle-to-attack-anyone-who-doesnt-bend-the-knee-late-night-tv-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/501719\/","title":{"rendered":"Seth Meyers on Trump\u2019s State of the Union address: \u2018A vehicle to attack anyone who doesn\u2019t bend the knee\u2019 | Late-night TV roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s extremely long State of the Union address<\/a> and a bombshell new report on redactions from the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> files.<\/p>\n

Seth Meyers<\/p>\n

Donald Trump arrived to his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening with low expectations and even lower goodwill, with his approval rating hovering somewhere around a dismal 36%. \u201cSo the polling was bad before the speech and bad after the speech,\u201d Seth Meyers<\/a> reported on Wednesday evening, \u201cand on top of that it was long and boring<\/a>,\u201d clocking in at a record one hour and 47 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Or, if you\u2019re Republican, it was \u201cthe best State of the Union speech that I\u2019ve seen\u201d, to quote the House speaker, Mike Johnson. Ted Cruz went one step further, calling it \u201cmajestic\u201d. And according to one Fox News commentator: \u201cAny historian who\u2019s writing about this presidency has to watch this speech tonight and read it carefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorians have to read it carefully? Trump didn\u2019t read it carefully!\u201d the Late Night responded before footage of Trump stumbling over nonsensical sentences.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yet despite the fact that it strained everyone\u2019s attention spans, Trump expected everyone to leap to their feet and applaud for him, including the Democrats, and his feelings were very hurt when they didn\u2019t,\u201d he continued. When Democrats refused to applaud, Trump lashed out \u2013 \u201cThese people are crazy,\u201d he said menacingly.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is so desperate for a win, he tried to co-opt the US men\u2019s hockey team\u2019s Olympic gold medal like he had something to do with it,\u201d Meyers added before a clip of Trump bragging: \u201cOur country is winning again, and in fact we\u2019re winning so much that we really don\u2019t know what to do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHey man, you\u2019re not winning,\u201d Meyers corrected. \u201cThey\u2019re winning. You didn\u2019t win jack shit.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump used his speech the way he uses all of his speeches: as a vehicle to attack anyone who doesn\u2019t bend the knee,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAnd since that\u2019s a majority of the country, his poll numbers are terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still all recovering from the president\u2019s bramble ramble brain jamble,\u201d said Stephen Colbert<\/a> on Wednesday\u2019s Late Show. \u201cBut the reviews are in, and they are bad.\u201d The New York Times called it a \u201ctedious, tiresome performance\u201d, while the Atlantic declared that \u201cthe State of the Union revealed a sad reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

Colbert, for what it\u2019s worth, found the speech \u201cboring and disturbing\u201d, both for what was said and for what was not.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing Trump did not mention in his two-hour, hockey-humping, immigrant grumbling jambaroo was anything about the Epstein files,\u201d Colbert noted. \u201cNow, it is well known that big, incriminating stuff has been redacted from what Pam Bondi released,\u201d including 50 pages of material<\/a> related to Trump. \u201cAnd it\u2019s totally on-brand for the DoJ \u2013 this DoJ especially \u2013 to be protecting Trump. It\u2019s the least surprising headline since \u2018Youngest child becomes theater major\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we don\u2019t know exactly what\u2019s in there or if it\u2019s true, and whatever it is, Trump denies any wrongdoing,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut it is weird that these files specifically are missing, because the law prohibits redacting on the basis of embarrassment or reputational harm.\u201d And according to the New York Times<\/a>, the missing files include FBI memos summarizing interviews conducted by the bureau with a woman who alleged in 2019 that she had been sexually assaulted by Trump and Epstein when she was 13 to 15 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoly unholy. This would be the worst scandal in presidential history,\u201d Colbert marveled. \u201cThat the files are missing should be the biggest story in the world, but we\u2019re all so exhausted and worn down by this turd of a time that when a bombshell like this comes along, we go, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s terrible \u2026 I wonder if that baby monkey made friends yet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel<\/p>\n

In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> continued to trace the fallout from Trump\u2019s State of the Union address. \u201cBasically Trump\u2019s message to America, if you didn\u2019t see it last night, was if you\u2019re struggling financially or trying to support your family by putting food on the table, if you\u2019re having a hard time, you\u2019re wrong. You\u2019re actually very rich, and let\u2019s stop talking about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour days after the supreme court torched his tariffs \u2013 the centerpiece of his cockamamie foreign policy \u2013 he said we are winning so much, we don\u2019t know what to do with it,\u201d he added. \u201cThis is what happens to old people who only watch Fox News: they become confused about reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he\u2019s 79 years old and spoke uninterrupted for almost two hours \u2013 it\u2019s the only proof I\u2019ll ever need that he wears a diaper,\u201d he quipped. \u201cHe\u2019s definitely wearing a diaper. He might be wearing two diapers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in his monologue, Kimmel also touched on the bombshell New York Times story on redactions from the Epstein files including FBI interviews with a woman who alleged that Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her when she was a young teenager.<\/p>\n

Robert Garcia, a House Democrat on the oversight committee, confirmed in a statement that the justice department \u201cappears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey Pam Bondi, cancel your blowout! We\u2019ve got heinous crimes to investigate here,\u201d Kimmel said with disgust. \u201cWhy are they being allowed to hide this stuff? You\u2019re supposed to release the files! What a bunch of hypocrites. If these interviews were on Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, we\u2019d know every word of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daily Show<\/p>\n

And on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic examined the gory rhetoric of Trump\u2019s speech, in which he bragged about the US military shooting targets in the head and streaking halls with blood. \u201cLook, there\u2019s nothing wrong with honoring Americans who have been through tragedies, but we used to have American presidents who could do that without sounding like a six-year-old dismembering his GI Joes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But the speech \u201cwasn\u2019t just two hours of Donald Trump<\/a> traumatizing America\u201d, she added. \u201cOne reason that the speech went so long is because Republicans kept interrupting for applause breaks, which Trump would just bask in, rotating back and forth like he was stuck on oscillating-fan mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the Democrats stayed seated almost the entire night, and you could tell it started to get under Trump\u2019s skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Faced with a disapproving audience, Trump lashed out. \u201cHow do you not stand?\u201d he shouted. \u201cYou should be ashamed of yourselves!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMr President, I will have you know that the Democrats are not standing because they are outraged by your tyranny and lawless behavior \u2026 and also they\u2019re asleep right now,\u201d Lydic joked before clips of Democratic lawmakers who apparently dozed off during the speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump\u2019s extremely long State of the Union address and a bombshell new report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-501719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}