MORRISTOWN — Seth Meyers once riffed, with Donald Trump in the audience, about Trump someday running for president — not as a Republican, but as a joke.
“Some people have actually blamed me for the fact that Donald Trump decided to run,” Meyers said of his 2011 roasting of Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
The ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ host, who rose to fame during 13 years on Saturday Night Live, drew laughs Saturday night in discussing Trump, former President Barack Obama and the mindset of voters at the Mayo Performing Arts Center.
Meyers, 43, said that on his show, “we talk about crazy things that happen in the news,” adding, “business is booming right now.”
“Nothing is shocking any more. I feel like shock is now no longer an emotion I am capable of expressing about what’s happening,” Meyer said.
He alluded to Trump’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.
“Our president used the prayer breakfast to basically slam the ratings for Arnold Swarzenegger’s ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’ Because what is prayer, if not a time to air bitter grievances,” Meyer said.
Referencing Obama, who also lambasted Trump during the 2011 dinner, Meyers said he is “happy” for the former president, in that he no longer has to grapple with unswayable opponents to gun control measures and the scientific evidence behind climate change.
“Basically, at this point, for those people a giant hurricane could form,” Meyers said, “and just start whipping its way across the country, and the hurricane, in its gusts of wind, could pick up every handgun in America and just start indiscriminately shooting those handguns, and when it finally dissipates, you would say, would 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.”
Meyer’s musings on politics occupied less than half of his 50-minute set. He segued to his personal life, from his regret at waiting five years to propose to his wife to the birth of their 10-month-old son.
Afterward, he mingled with some attendees at a reception.
Meyer was speaking as part of the Drew University Forum, which he noted hosted wide-ranging speakers such as John Oliver and Bill O’Reilly in the past two years.
“You guys do not have a type,” he said.
Meyers said he never imagined Trump would become president, calling it “the equivalent of a dolphin winning the Kentucky Derby.”
“Not one single newspaper of any import endorsed Donald Trump, and then Donald Trump won anyway, and you realize there are certain things the press cannot disabuse you of,” Meyers said.
He drew a parallel to the popularity of the critically panned 2016 movie, “Suicide Squad,’ starring Margot Robbie.
“Every movie critic in America basically wrote — don’t see this movie, this movie is dumb and it doesn’t make any sense. And America was like, I’m going to see Suicide Squad … there’s a hot girl who looks like the Joker and she’s got short shorts and a baseball bat,'” Meyer said.
Meyers said that Trump’s supporters have not been shy about contacting him to gloat.
“After he won, a lot of Trump supporters wrote me on Twitter and asked, who’s laughing now. And I wanted to say, I am, just because I’m still capable of laughing and he is not. He never laughs,” Meyers said.
Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobJenningsNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
