President Donald Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night was, as "Late Night" host Seth Meyers said, "heavy on empty promises and light on substance." It was a speech that the media was eager to hype, no matter what was actually said. The fact that he read the speech off the screen seemed to be good enough.
But, while the speech may have been seen as an empty one, the media fawned over it — something Meyers noted.
"Trump spent the last year and a half lowering the bar when it comes to public speaking, so the fact that trump managed to sustain a muted tone that, for any other politician, would be considered unremarkable and even boring, was seen as a huge victory last night. And look, there were plenty of voters who were impressed, but the media were impressed over their favorite topic: his tone."
Meyers focused on MSNBC pundits who fawned over a camera shot showing Trump reading the speech in his motorcade — something Meyers said Trump intentionally did "as he to be aware of how important the speech was." "They're talking like they're watching a gorilla at the zoo," Meyers said. "'Oh look at that, he's using sign language!'"
CNN, naturally, was eager to hype the speech, showing a countdown clock "upgraded from its normal-sized countdown clock to a super-sized countdown clock that took up half the screen."
And to the pundits who said this was the moment Trump "became president," Meyers had a reply: "I bet there are some Muslims and undocumented immigrants who will tell you that he became president back in fucking January. Seriously. Do you have amnesia? We have been here many times before, like a year and a half now. Do you remember all the other times you said the exact same thing? "
Meyers summed up the media's reactions and attempts to normalize Trump by simply saying, "Like a pair of pants, Trump tried on normal and asked America, 'Does this make my ass look big?'"
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