Seth Meyers opened Monday’s Late Night monologue without jokes, calling the assassination attempt against Trump “poison to our democracy.”
“Political violence must be rejected in all its forms — it is both morally wrong and a poison to democracy,” Meyers said in a somber monologue. “We must all condemn it and repudiate it and do everything in our power to stop it.”
Meyers said his prep for Monday’s show felt reminiscent of the day his Late Night team crafted their response to the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021. “I said then that multiracial, pluralistic democracy is fragile and precious,” he said. “It requires our vigilance, stewardship and protection. That’s as true now as it was then, and in light of the horrific events at a Trump rally on Saturday, it’s clear that we must recommit ourselves to that endeavor as fully and as steadfastly as we can.”
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Meyers continued with encouragement for his audience to avoid spiraling “into despair.”
“We’ve been doing this show for 10 years,” the host said. “In 10 years, we’ve witnessed far too many shocking scenes of political violence, from Charlottesville, to Jan. 6, to an attack on the spouse of Nancy Pelosi, to a shooting at a congressional baseball practice, to a kidnapping plot against the governor of Michigan and now an assassination attempt on the life of Donald Trump.”
Meyers noted that the attack against Trump “thankfully spared him, but tragically, tragically, killed one spectator and injured two others.” He went on to condemn the commonality of gun violence in America.
“Schools, shopping malls, grocery stores, movie theaters, houses of worship and now political rallies have all been infected by this scourge of everyday violence,” Meyers said. “We cannot accept that there are too many guns. They’re too easy to get. We must work to change that.”
He finished the serious opening of his show with a call to action for protecting democracy. “There is no autopilot setting for democracy,” Meyers said. “Every generation before us has had to do the difficult work of safeguarding this cherished enterprise, and now we’re called upon to do the same. That can feel at times like a daunting task, but the case for optimism and perseverance is this: Those generations succeeded. They protected democracy and passed it on to us. They witnessed political violence, from assassinations, to campaigns of racist terror, to attempted coups and they refused to succumb to a society where reason and humanity have failed, where violence rules. They built something better, and now it is our task to hold on to it.”
He continued, “Politics can succeed not by turning away from it, but by elevating it, articulating your ideas, organizing your friends and neighbors, persuading your fellow Americans. That’s the real work of democracy. That’s what we need now.”
Meyers’ fellow late night colleague, Stephen Colbert, also addressed Saturday’s incident in a somber segment that opened the The Late Show. “My immediate reaction when I saw this on Saturday was horror at what was unfolding, relief that Donald Trump had lived and, frankly, grief for my beautiful country — and then fresh horror, as we learned that attendees had also been shot, one of whom died at the rally,” Colbert said. The Tonight Show skipped the assassination attempt, with host Jimmy Fallon briefly mentioning Trump’s vice president pick J.D. Vance before moving out of politics for the rest of the night.
Later in his monologue, Meyers returned to his regular joke-filled programming, but still offered searing commentary on the weekend’s other major news, including Trump’s running mate and a judge’s decision on Monday to dismiss the case against the former president for his alleged removal of classified documents from the White House.
“Presidents can now just take whatever they want from the White House?” Meyers quipped. “When Joe Biden leaves, he should jump in the cockpit and fly away with Air Force One. He already has the Aviators!”
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