Photo by Karen Mancinelli for Drew University
By Kevin Coughlin
They were just kidding, Donald!
Rewind: The White House Correspondents Dinner, 2011. President Obama filleted Donald Trump, in the audience, over his Birther hoax. And then host Seth Meyers got up.
“Donald Trump says he’ll run as a Republican. Which is funny, because I just assumed he was running as a joke,” said the comedian, best known for anchoring as Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live.
“Some have said that that spurred him to run, and show us,” Meyers told a packed house Saturday at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown.
Kicking off this year’s Drew Forum lecture series for Drew University, the Emmy Award-winning writer and host of Late Night With Seth Meyers spent much of the next 45 minutes exploring the ramifications of that joke, for the nation and, especially, for late night talk show hosts.
“Business is booming!” proclaimed Meyers, unrepentant.
‘WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?’
Who’s laughing now? gleeful Trump supporters Tweeted after their candidate won the 2016 election.
“And I wanted to say, ‘I am.’ Just because I’m still capable of laughing, and he is not,” Meyers said of arguably the most humorless occupant of the White House since Richard Nixon.
Meyers said he felt bad for Canadians — Americans keep vowing to move there after cataclysmic elections, yet never do — and for the Chicago Cubs.
Their World Series victory after 108 years of failure seemed unbelievable…for about two weeks. Then came the election.
“The equivalent of what just happened in politics was like a dolphin winning the Kentucky Derby,” Meyers observed, to roars of laughter.
Video: Seth Meyers at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner
UPSTAGED BY SEALS
The 43-year-old comic tried putting things in perspective by reminding the audience that craziness has a venerable history in American politics. Eight years ago, he noted, the nation elected a man named Barack Hussein Obama, “a guy whose middle name was the same as Saddam Hussein’s last name, and whose last name was a letter off from Osama [bin Laden].
“That would have been like, in 1944, someone ran for president and won, whose name was Stalin Bitler,” Meyers said.
He expressed sympathy for Obama, who realized in his second term that certain camps could not be swayed.
Meyers pictured a hurricane churning across the USA, sweeping up and indiscriminately firing every handgun in the land.
“And when it finally dissipated, you would say, ‘Will you admit now, after the Gun Hurricane, that we have too many guns, and climate change issues?’
“And those people would say: ‘No, all of that happened because you let gays marry.'”
Meyers jokingly claimed credit for the Navy Seals’ takedown of Osama bin Laden, saying President Obama ordered it during the Correspondents Dinner to upstage him.
(“Tonight?!” Meyers remembered thinking. “They waited 10 years and they got him tonight?“)
Americans agreed with Obama’s decision to bury the terrorist’s body at sea, continued Meyers, giving thanks that the situation did not unfold under President Trump — who might have displayed the cadaver in the Oval Office for selfies with visiting dignitaries.
“He’d be stuffing it with candy. [Imitating Trump:] ‘We’re going to make it a piñata. The kids love it.'”
CAREFUL, SETH
Meyers, a graduate of Northwestern University, riffed about flubbing the lyrics to Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Wrigley Field. He shared amusing tales of his botched proposal to his wife, human rights lawyer Alexi Ashe; food poisoning that nearly turned Meyers from groom to suspect at their wedding; and their hilarious Uber drive to a New York hospital, for the delivery of their son last year.
But he pinned the laugh meter with his jabs at politics, a realm where he professed nothing shocks him anymore.
Citing President Trump’s recent appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast, where the Commander in Chief sought prayers for his low-rated successor on Celebrity Apprentice, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Meyers imagined Trump attending a worship service.
“At church, they talk about the glory of the Lord. And he must get so jealous,” Meyers said. [Imitiating Trump:] ‘Is this the only guy we’re going to talk about? Does he have any hotels?'”
Careful, Seth. The President still could change his mind about 2020.
Next up for the Drew Forum: Basketball Hall of Famer Earl Monroe speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Ira Berkow on March 14, 2017, followed on April 5 by Ron Chernow, best-selling author of the biography that inspired the Broadway smash Hamilton. Both talks are at Drew University in Madison; tickets are $32. Past speakers have included U.S. presidents, foreign heads of state and acclaimed journalists. The Drew Forum is supported by the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation and the Thomas H. Kean Visiting Lectureship.
Thought it was very funny. I guess sometimes the truth about Trump hurts, especially if you voted for him.
Sorry, I don’t think this is funny! I’m a graduate of Drew University, I’m very surprised at this??? But I wasn’t there. I’m in Beautiful Florida weather waiting for my SuperBowl company.