"Late Night" host Seth Meyers on Tuesday used "A Closer Look" to explore what he called "the real Donald Trump" — in other words, the Republican presidential nominee's public persona prior to entering the political arena.
"Before he became a presidential candidate, Donald Trump was a blustery New York City businessman known mostly to voters not for the person he was behind closed doors but for the character he played in tabloids and on TV," Meyers explained. "And as he has often reminded us in recent weeks, back then life was so much easier."
Meyers continued, "But, of course, this long campaign has unearthed for public view all kinds of deeply unflattering information about Trump's business record." He cited a recent New York Times report revealing that Trump in the early 1990s "avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited."
He also noted a recent Washington Post exposé by investigative journalist David A. Fahrenthold — who has long been digging into Trump's philanthropic past (or lack thereof) — revealing that the real estate mogul had crashed a 1996 ribbon-cutting ceremony for a nursery school for kids with AIDS even though "he was not a donor, period." Trump then stole a seat reserved for Steven Fisher, a real estate developer who had significantly helped finance the new school.
"He showed up at a benefit for kids with AIDS and pretended to be a donor," Meyers reiterated. "That sounds like a storyline from an episode of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'"
Shares