Is Trump As Afraid of Seth Meyers As It Seems?
Donald Trump has been on a rampage against late-night show hosts for a while now. Most notably, his ire for Stephen Colbert seems to be at least partially connected to The Late Show’s cancellation by CBS earlier this month. But Trump has also been attacking both Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon. On Tuesday, Trump said both were under threat of being canceled just like Colbert. It was the second time in just a week that Trump issued a statement like that.
Between saying that Colbert lacked talent, Kimmel was less talented than Colbert and Fallon was “weak, and very insecure,” it could be hard to notice much else about these tirades. Clearly these attacks are meant to be a distraction from the Epstein debacle. There’s also the fact that Trump views television personalities as his very real political enemies, and considers getting them off the air as the ultimate form of punishment.
But amid all that hullabaloo, there’s something else very important we’re all missing: Seth Meyers. He’s nowhere to be found among Trump’s many recent personal attacks on the late-night universe. It’s relatively surprising, considering that Meyers was one of Trump’s earliest and toughest critics. And there’s that whole theory that Meyers is the reason Trump ran for president. Or as Andy Cohen told Meyers in 2019: “Some people trace Trump’s fire to run for president to the night that you kind of humiliated him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner which you hosted.”
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While Meyers has disputed this and joked about it plenty since that fateful 2011 evening, there’s no doubt that Meyers occupies a special spot in Trump’s petty, vengeful little heart. Plus, of all the late-night shows, Meyers has consistently been the harshest for the longest. You can really feel that Meyers hates Trump in every joke.
Yet, despite Meyers’ nightly hits against Trump, the president hasn’t taken any headline-grabbing direct shots at the host of Late Night with Seth Meyers since January 2025, before he was president.
“How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people — Remember, they also run MSDNC,” Trump wrote a week before inauguration. “I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast.”
Gotta say, “Marble Mouth Meyers” isn’t even that good. Maybe that’s why Meyers has been excluded from Trump’s weekly late-night temper tantrums. Trump has leverage on CBS, Kimmel’s on vacation and Fallon is, well, Fallon. Trump, for all of his many, many, many faults, seems to have some weaselly survival instincts to know when he can’t win a fight. He doesn’t have anything on Meyers right now and pushing NBC probably won’t result in the victory that pushing around Paramount and CBS did. Still, Trump leaving Meyers alone hasn’t meant that Meyers is leaving Trump alone — far from it.
“Donald Trump has achieved many firsts,” Meyers said on Monday night. “He’s the first president to be impeached twice. He’s the first president to be convicted of a felony. He’s the first president to dress up as a sanitation worker and audition for the Village People B team. Who else is on the Village People B Team? Great question. It’s garbage man, Wolfman, birthday clown, lumberjack and Mr. Met. And if they show up to your party, you’re gonna want to leave that party.”
There’s a pattern to who Trump singles out, versus who he ignores or relegates to his administration to address. When it came to South Park deep-faking his tiny penis, a White House official responded through official channels — but Trump didn’t say anything via Truth Social. It’s odd. Why attack Fallon and not Meyers? Why threaten Colbert through Paramount but not South Park?
From his long history as a bully and predator, we know he only targets people and entities he believes to be at the disadvantage. Does this mean Trump is steering clear of Meyers now because he’s afraid?
