Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure Americans on the economy as the private sector sheds jobs and grocery prices keep rising.
Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers devoted his main segment on Wednesday’s Late Night to the US economy, which has seen better days. “Costs of everything, from food to electricity, are soaring while employers are shedding jobs,” he explained. “This is when a president needs to show empathy and demonstrate that he knows the plight of hardworking Americans, and – oh no, as I’m saying this I’m remembering who I’m talking about and realizing that there’s no fucking way he’s going to do that.”
Instead the president, in an interview with Politico this week, gave the economy the grade of “A+++++”.
“Now I know that sounds tone-deaf, but in fairness, it’s possible Trump was just glitching,” Meyers joked. And “it won’t surprise you to learn that Trump’s assessment of the economy is very much at odds with how pretty much everyone else feels about it”.
A new Fox News poll even found that 62% of Americans blame Trump for the current economic conditions. “So it’s less of an A+++++ and more of an F minus minus minus minus,” Meyers noted.
“Trump is running up against the same problem Biden had: you can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth with their own eyes every time they buy their groceries or pay their heating bills,” he concluded. “Trump thinks he’s crushing it but the American people think he’s – ” as always, Meyers quotes a news anchor – “‘sucking’.”
Jimmy Kimmel
In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel rolled back the tape on Trump’s speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that was supposed to be about the economy but “was almost not at all about the economy”.
“He hasn’t been out for a while,” Kimmel noted. “If he had talked for three more minutes, it would’ve legally been classified an Avatar movie, that’s how long he went on for.”
In the nearly three-hour speech, Trump delivered “all his greatest hits: windmills, Sleepy Joe, bing bing, all the crowdpleasers. He told the Maga faithful who are having trouble making ends meet that their kids don’t need so many dolls or pencils. He said you only need a couple of dolls and one or two pencils. The guy who bedazzled this room in gold thinks your child has too many pencils at school.
“His strategy, it seems, is to just keep saying things are great,” Kimmel added. “Which is the same mistake Joe Biden made, by the way. You can’t just tell people the economy is good when they’re paying more for everything. We know how much things cost. People are looking at the price of apples with our eyes. And you’re telling us to not see it. He wants us to be a bunch of not-sees.”
But the “most offensive” thing he said was that he was “big with Black people” because “they know a scam better than anybody”.
“That’s right, his father scammed them all the time,” said an unamused Kimmel. “When he says ‘Black people’, he means Hershel Walker and Kanye West and that’s it.”
Stephen Colbert
And on the Late Show, Stephen Colbert celebrated “the holiday season” when “everyone is out buying stuff”.
“Unfortunately, right now the most expensive thing you can do with stuff is buy it, because prices are up and Americans are not happy about it,” he added.
Colbert cited a recent study that found 76% of Americans view the economy negatively, though CNN claimed that “actually, things seem worse than they are,” calling this a “windchill economy”.
“Windchill because – I think we can all agree – 2025 blows,” he joked.
In other tough news for Trump, a new Fox News poll found that Trump has a 61% disapproval rating, while a different Politico poll found that 37% of Trump’s own voters reported the worst cost of living in their lifetime. “It’s gotta hurt more when it’s his own voters,” said Colbert. “They’re supposed to love him no matter what. It’s like your parents sitting you down and saying: ‘Timmy, your mom and I are getting a divorce, and we want you to know: it’s your fault.’”
So, to “convince everybody that the bad economy is actually good”, Trump addressed a crowd in Pennsylvania on Tuesday with “some sound advice on how to save lots of money this holiday season”.
According to Trump, “you can give up certain products, you can give up pencils”.
“How much does he think pencils cost?” Colbert wondered. (A pack goes for $4.36 on Amazon, according to Late Show factcheckers.) “So saving money on pencils may not be the stupidest thing he’s said, but I’m going to say it’s No 2.”
