President Donald Trump has attacked NBC’s Late Night host Seth Meyers over a recent monologue, declaring in a Truth Social post that Meyers is “100% ANTI TRUMP, WHICH IS PROBABLY ILLEGAL!!!” and calling the comedian a “truly deranged lunatic” and “the WORST to perform, live or otherwise.” The outburst followed a segment in which Meyers mocked remarks Trump delivered on a visit to the USS George Washington in Japan, riffing on the president’s preference for steam-powered catapults over electromagnetic launch systems on US aircraft carriers and joking that Trump thinks he understands aviation because he dances like a runway marshaller. Trump’s post, published on Saturday, demanded to know “Why does NBC waste its time and money on a guy like this???,” framing Meyers’ show as relentless political opposition rather than comedy.
The criticism is the latest in a long-running feud between Trump and late-night hosts and arrives as the president continues to use his social platform to single out media and entertainment figures he says are hostile to him. In this instance, the trigger was Meyers’ extended send-up of Trump’s remarks to sailors—material that the host highlighted on his Thursday broadcast with archival clips and a visual gag in which a clip of Trump’s dance-floor routine was cut against footage of flight deck crews guiding aircraft. Trump reacted two days later, asserting that Meyers’ constant ridicule was tantamount to a political campaign against him and suggesting, without citing any legal basis, that such opposition was “probably illegal.” He also repeated a familiar line of attack on Nielsen performance, contending that Meyers has “NO TALENT, NO RATINGS.”
Meyers has not issued a formal statement in response, but his show has been a consistent venue for satire of Trump’s rhetoric and policy. In recent weeks the host has joined other late-night anchors in lampooning Trump’s public hints about staying in power beyond the constitutional two-term limit and his high-visibility construction projects at the White House, themes the comedians have treated as both comic fodder and cause for concern. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart argued that Trump’s musings about a third term were hardly hypothetical given the sale of “Trump 2028” merchandise, while Meyers zeroed in on the way showmanship and trolling can displace governing, pointing viewers to examples of what he cast as performative disruption. The critique is presented nightly as topical comedy, but Trump has repeatedly read it as unfair antagonism powered by corporate media owners.
The latest exchange has also revived an older point of contention between the two men: Meyers’ insistence that satire is protected speech and Trump’s tendency to describe media mockery as censorship-worthy or otherwise out of bounds. In September, after ABC benched Jimmy Kimmel over on-air remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Meyers used his show to defend his fellow host and to argue that political leaders and executives should resist “bullying and censorship.” Trump, by contrast, celebrated Kimmel’s suspension and urged networks to rein in other hosts, singling out Meyers then as someone NBC should remove. Meyers framed that backlash as proof that comedy still has power; Trump cast the shows as partisan operations waging war on his presidency under the cover of humour.