Seth Meyers on Trump’s response to LA wildfires: ‘How does this guy find a way to make everything on earth about himself?’

Late-show hosts talk about the courageous responses to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, Donald Trump’s blame-spreading and a tense presidential reunion at Jimmy Carter’s funeral.

Seth Meyers

On Thursday evening, Seth Meyers addressed the deadly LA wildfires, which have killed 10 as of Friday morning and displaced thousands this week. “The images are surreal. The loss is incalculable,” the Late Night host said. “But in the face of that loss, friends and neighbors, strangers alike are banding together to help one another. The bravery of firefighters and emergency workers has been second to none. No firefighter should ever have to pay for a beer or, because it’s LA, a matcha smoothie ever again.”

“The kindness and compassion and resourcefulness and solidarity on display have been nothing short of breathtaking and awe-inspiring,” he continued. “It’s as clear as ever that people desperately want to help one another. Which is why we deserve leaders and institutions who will do the same.

“I think it’s also important to say again in this moment that climate change is real, it is an imminent and existential threat to the lives and safety of Americans and we must treat it like the crisis it is,” he added. “Unfortunately, there are politicians who would rather spread lies about the emergency response.”

Related: Stephen Colbert on Angelenos: ‘Doing everything they can to help one another’

More specifically, Donald Trump, who, as Meyers put it, “decided to chime in not to help, but to spread bullshit that will just make the emergency response more difficult”.

Trump has blamed the Biden administration for the fires, posting on Truth Social: “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA. THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!” There is no connection between federal and state water management and the intensity of these fires or the ability of people to fight them.

“How does this guy find a way to make everything on earth about himself?” Meyers wondered. “It’s honestly almost impressive at this point.”

Trump also blamed California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, for not signing the “water restoration declaration”, a document that does not exist. “Of course it doesn’t exist,” Meyers laughed. “You can tell just from the phrase ‘water restoration declaration’, which sounds super fucking made-up. It sounds like the name a bunch of stoners would make up for their bong.”

Stephen Colbert

“We here at The Late Show, we know so many people – dear friends – who have lost everything in these fires, and our hearts go out to everyone in Los Angeles,” said Stephen Colbert on Thursday.

“Now, in times like these, it’s hard to know what to do. But it’s pretty easy to know what not to do.” For example, the online betting site Polymarket has been accepting wagers on estimates for how long it will take to contain the blazes. “Starting a fantasy disaster pool? Clearly the wrong way to respond to a tragedy,” Colbert remarked.

On Wednesday, Biden was in California, “doing what presidents should do: pledging federal disaster support to a stricken state”. At the press conference, Biden also announced that he was officially the first sitting president to become a great-grandfather, as his eldest granddaughter gave birth to a baby boy.

“And with under two weeks left, there’s still time for Joe to set more old-man presidential records,” Colbert joked, such as “most Malt-o-Meals consumed at 4am, most rubber bands collected in an old cigar box, first president ever to fall asleep at a picnic and be carried away by ants”.

The Daily Show

And on The Daily Show, guest host Desi Lydic recapped the president-packed funeral of Jimmy Carter, America’s longest-living chief executive. “I don’t know how you measure the life of a man, whether through their personal accomplishments or the lives they touched, but if you measure the life by the VIP guest list at your funeral, then Jimmy Carter was a fucking pimp,” she joked.

The funeral brought together all five living former or current US presidents. “It is incredibly rare to have five American presidents in the same room together, and even rarer to have Donald and Melania in the same room together,” Lydic said.

The group of current or former rivals were all seated together, in a seating chart “so awkward that it probably had them asking: is there any extra room in that coffin”? Lydic laughed.

However, there was one “surprising moment of chemistry” as Trump had a seemingly friendly chat with Barack Obama. “Oooh, someone is trying to make Elon jealous!” Lydic trilled. “This is a little weird for Obama though, right? To go from ‘this guy is future Hitler’ to ‘oh man, cool story, future Hitler’.”

As for Kamala Harris, seated in front of them – “I don’t know if that funeral music was for Carter or for her,” Lydic quipped.