Seth Meyers Mocks Trump’s Deeply Humiliating Jan. 7 Speech Outtakes

This past week, the Jan. 6 Committee investigating Trump’s incitement of—and inaction during—the deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol embarrassed the former president by airing outtakes of his speech he was to deliver the following day, many, many hours after the attempted coup.

And Late Night host Seth Meyers couldn’t get enough of it.

“I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday…,” Trump says, before hand-signaling to the cue-card handler to flip a card. “And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement, you do not represent our country, and if you broke the law…”—at this point, Trump gets belligerent.

“I can’t say that,” he tells an off-screen adviser, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna… I already said, ‘You will pay.’”

Then, Trump said, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defied the seat of dest—it’s defiled, right?” he asks, squinting. “See, I can’t see it very well. I’ll do this…I’m gonna do this. Let’s go.”

He appears to start over. “I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack yesterday… Yesterday is a hard word for me.”

His daughter Ivanka Trump can be heard off-screen saying, “Just take it out.”

After a few more screw-ups regarding the line “ensure the integrity of the vote” that saw Trump waving his hands in frustration, Meyers had to cut it short.

“Nailed it!” he exclaimed. “Really? The word ‘yesterday’ is a hard word for you? It’s three syllables! Maybe ‘yesterday’ is difficult for him because he doesn’t understand the concept. He literally has no memory of anything that happened more than five minutes ago. He’s like a cave man who’s not sure if the sun will come back out after it goes down at night—that’s why he looks straight at it, to make sure it’s still there.”

Regarding Trump’s hand-waving gestures once he screwed up, Meyers cracked, “I think my favorite part of that sequence of clips is this move he does once he screws up. He looks like he’s surrounded by a swarm of invisible bees. Does he think he can literally fight off the word with his bare hands? Keep that three-syllable word away from me or I’ll have to karate-chop it!”