Seth Meyers Catches Up on the Worst Three Weeks of Donald Trump's Campaign: A Closer Look

-Well, we just got back from a three-week break, and per my contract with NBC, the only thing I was allowed to watch was the Olympics. In fact -- and this is true -- I actually competed in the breakdancing event. You guys didn't know I could dance, because my legs are behind this desk, but I'm always practicing. Watch. I just did a cross-step into a helicopter, into a coin drop. That's why they call me Little Desk, AKA D-Boy. Anyway, the point is, I haven't paid attention to the news for three weeks, so I'm just going to read off the cue cards real quick to catch up on what I missed. Let's see here. Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. Oh, wow. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Cool, cool. Harris secured enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee. Biden got COVID. Trump claimed Biden never had COVID; it was just a ruse to drop out of the race. Republicans complained that Harris tried to ban plastic straws and called her a DEI hire. Trump called her Laughing Kamala, then Lying Kamala, then Kamabla. Republicans called her the Border Czar, even though she wasn't and that's not a thing. Trump said he might bomb Mexico. J.D. Vance became the first V.P. in decades to have a net-negative favorability rating after he called Democrats childless cat ladies, got slammed by Jennifer Aniston, and was accused of a couch, which he did not do. Apparently, it was just hand stuff. Vance said Democrats would call him racist for drinking Diet Mountain Dew. Vance wrote the foreword to a book by the Project 2025 guy while claiming he had nothing to do with Project 2025. Tim Walz called Republicans weird and said it's brat summer. Trump responded by calling Hannibal Lecter a lovely man. Ted Cruz said Kamala can't have his cheeseburgers. Trump told Christians they won't have to vote anymore if he wins. Wally, how many more cards are there? -We're still in July. - me! 190,000 people joined the White Dudes for Kamala online event that raised over $4 million. We found out Colin Jost is too fragile to be outdoors. A Fox News host said voting for a woman turns you into a woman. "Closer Look" writer Sal Gentile threw out the first pitch at a Mets game, which isn't newsworthy and shouldn't be in here. Trump had a humiliating meltdown at the National Association of Black Journalists, where he attacked the moderator, got laughed at by the audience and claimed, among other things, that Harris happened to turn black, which is both racist and insane. Trump said V.P. candidates don't matter after everyone made fun of his V.P. candidate, congratulated Vladimir Putin on a prisoner swap that secured the release of American hostages. The Washington Post reported that Trump was investigated for allegedly taking $10 million from Egypt until it was shut down by his attorney general. Harris picked Tim Walz as a running mate. Wallace joked about Vance a couch, which he did not do. Everything was over cushion. Republicans called Walz "Tampon Tim," tried to swift-boat him with lies about his service record, and said he was the Bernie Sanders of Congress, even though there is already a Bernie Sanders in Congress famously named Bernie Sanders. Fans held a rally where the stage was so shoddy it looked like he was campaigning for Kamala. Trump held a deranged press conference where he invented a new theme park, called Transgender World, and claimed his crowd on January 6th was bigger than Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. He told a story about being in a helicopter that almost crashed with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. Then, Brown said that never happened. Then, it turned out Trump was confusing Brown with someone else. The Trump campaign got hacked. Harris overtook Trump in the polls. The New York Times called it the worst three weeks of Trump's campaign. Trump slinked back to Twitter for an interview with Elon Musk. He descended further into madness by claiming Kamala's crowd in Detroit was A.I., and that the people at the rally didn't actually exist. And on top of all that, a French pole vaulter knocked over the crossbar with his giant dong. Whoo! Whoo-whoo-whoo! I think it's time... to take another three weeks off. Just kidding. For more on this -- Jesus, "More"?! -- it's time for "A Closer Look." -Previously on "Late Night"... -Republicans are riding high off the RNC. -This is going to be a triumphant Donald Trump. -Crowd on its feet, cheering former President Trump. There with his running mate, just 39 years old, J.D. Vance. -I almost want to walk into a casino with him, because, I mean, he just can't seem to lose. -President Trump is leading Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in every single battleground state right now, including Michigan, where they'll hold a big rally today. There's thousands of people already lined up outside. It's a crowd that Biden and Harris, frankly, could only dream of. -There were thousands of people in this arena, cheering for him. -The panic over President Biden's candidacy is not only growing, it is now coming from the biggest influencers in the party. -They are in a panic because they're afraid they're going to lose to Donald Trump. -How demoralized and divided Democrats are right now. How much angst? We talk about the Democratic panic that I think is morphing. One writer said it's morphing into terror. -Major breaking news -- President Biden has just dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and is publicly endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. -Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, pushing forward on their nationwide battleground blitz. Harris and Walz are fresh off of two huge rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, where they received an energetic welcome from a massive, raucous crowd. -Vice President Kamala Harris now leading in the critical Blue Wall states by a sizable margin. -J.D. Vance is the first vice presidential pick to have a net-negative favorable rating immediately after that party's convention. - Uh, well... -Now... -They're accusing J.D. Vance of having sex with a couch. -The worst three weeks of Donald Trump's campaign. -It's brat summer. We're back. -We missed. We missed all of that. Three weeks to miss all of that. When I left this desk, three weeks ago, suffice to say, the vibes were brutal. The election felt like a funeral dirge. Trump was leading in national polls and seemed like he was coasting to victory. Fast-forward to today, Harris is now leading in the polls, including new ones out from three key swing states -- Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. If you told Democrats three weeks ago, they'd be up four points in those three states before the end of August, they'd be twerking like a Canadian pole vaulter. Which, by the way, was also awesome. And on top of all that, massive crowds are now waiting in lines to see Harris and Walz, mobbing her plane and literally swag-surfing at her rallies. True story. That crowd won the bronze in Olympic breakdancing. Look we have one day. We have one day to empty the chamber on Olympic jokes. Okay? We'll be done. The New York Times wrote a blockbuster piece on the collapse of Trump's campaign and the rolling meltdown he's been having over the wild swing in his fortunes. -New reporting from The New York Times dives into the chaos behind the scenes, and what the newspaper describes as the worst three weeks of Donald Trump's campaign. -Apparently, The New York Times reported that there was private polling in Ohio that showed that it was really, really close there. -Holy , he's floundering in Ohio, where J.D. Vance is a senator. Next, we're going to find out he's losing to Kamala among voters who live at Mar-A-Lago. Trump's not used to this. Someone else is getting more attention, so he's reacting the way a dog reacts to a new baby in the family. "I'm calling a press conference to announce that I've urinated on the couch." To which J.D. Vance would say, "Hey, dude, not cool! I have to have sex with that!" Guys... ...let me make -- let me make something clear. J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch. Okay? Get your mind out of the gutter. Or is J.D. Vance's grandma used to say, "Get your wang out of the cushions!" The attention the Harris campaign is receiving is clearly driving Trump out of his mind. He's posting on social media at weird hours, like a rabid animal locked in a psych ward. Here's what he had to say about the massive crowd that greeted Harris' plane in Detroit last week. -He said on Truth Social, "Has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, but she A.I.'d it and showed a massive crowd of so-called followers. But they didn't exist." The president -- former president -- goes on to say, "She's a cheater. She had nobody waiting, and the crowd looked like 10,000 people." -First of all, I guarantee Trump has no idea what "A.I." stands for. He probably thinks it's a steak sauce. "She A.1.'d the crowd." "She gave out free bottles of steak sauce to people on the street to get them to come. That's why I was there." "I was wearing a Kamala T-shirt and camo hat." You know there were witnesses there, right? You can't just claim an entire event was fake and get zero pushback from the people who saw it with their own eyes. For example, if someone said the audience at my show was fake, we could just cut to them to prove they're here. NBC promised me they would pay for A.I. What? Under my desk? Har-har, NBC. Trump's current level of madness and incoherence should be disqualifying. A normal political party would be panicking and desperately looking for a way to replace Trump, or at least trick him into dropping out by laying a trail of chicken nuggets that leads onto a plane that flies to a remote island in the Pacific, where he can live out his remaining days on a movie set that looks like the Oval Office. But Republicans are not normal. They are, as Tim Walz famously put it, weird, which is also clearly gotten under Trump's skin. -He said, you know, "I think J.D. Vance is weird." You know, it's a word that they use. I think he calls me that, too. No, we're not. We're very solid people. I think we're very -- actually, I think we're the opposite of weird. They're weird. If someone calls you weird... ...and your response is, "Were very solid people," you're weird. Trump is so clearly bothered by the "weird" allegation that he's trying to redirect them by claiming he's not the weird one, it's his running mate. -The New York Times is out here this morning reporting that when he was asked about Democrats trying to paint his ticket as weird, Trump said, quote, "Not about me. They're saying that about J.D." -It's amazing. Trump's reaction to being called weird is not to defend himself, but to throw J.D. Vance under the bus. I'd say that's the worst thing you could do to a running mate. But, you know, he did try to have the last one killed, which is...kinda weird. Next, Trump is going to start jumping in and also playing into the J.D. Vance couch rumors. -We had a beautiful sofa there, as opposed to what we have right now. Right now, we have you. -"We used to have a beautiful sofa there. But, unfortunately, we had to -- we had to get rid of the sofa. We had to keep it away from J.D." "The minute he saw the sofa he just said, 'Hubba-hubba,' and we said..." As if the response to being called weird could not get any weirder, J.D. himself was asked about Trump's quote on CNN yesterday, and said this. -I want to move on to something that Governor Walz has called you and Donald Trump, and that is "weird." -Sure. And it has taken off. The New York Times reports that when Donald Trump was asked about it, he said, "Not me. They're talking about J.D." - Well, certainly they've levied that charge against me more than anybody else. -Imagine the humiliation of having to pretend that in that pairing, you're the weird one. But I have to say, I think my favorite Trump response to being called weird is this. -Nobody's ever?! I've made a whole career out of it! That was the original title of his show. In fact, that brings us to a new segment, called "Seth Has a Bone to Pick With Democrats." Hey, Democrats, I don't mind you guys calling Republicans weird, but maybe throw a citation out there next time you do. I don't want to brag or anything, but we've been banging the "Republicans are weird" drum for like five years. When you boil it down, it's basically just a collection of gigantic weirdos. Trump and his cavalcade of goons are weird. Crime-adjacent weirdos. Trump's gang of weirdos. A rotating cast of fringe right-wing weirdos. The Fourth Horseman of the Weird-ocalypse. He is weird. Trump and his gang of weirdos. Trump is still a weirdo and a liar. Trump and his busload of weirdos. Weirdos, clowns, and bozos. All these weirdos. Just incredibly weird. These guys are so weird! Tim Walz! Yeah, yeah. Tim Walz says it once on TV and he's the V.P. nominee. Meanwhile, I didn't even make the shortlist. Is it because he was a high school football coach, and I once caught a football wrong, playing flag, and still have a janky knuckle on my right ring finger? Super weird. See? See, like, this goes right -- See, that comes on? Because I can't even get it on that one. Oh, so, I can't be vice president? That's how long we've been calling Republicans weird. I was still wearing a suit. And by the way, yes, responding to Democrats, calling Republicans weird by making a montage of yourself calling Republicans weird is weird. But I'm not weird. I'm a very solid person. Anyway, the point is... ...things have gotten so bad for Trump that even his supporters, like Kevin McCarthy, have been going on Fox News and telling him to snap out of it. Here's McCarthy from this morning. -You've got to make this race not on personalities. Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position. -Kev buddy, it's too late. This is the horse you chose to ride. You may want him to magically turn into Secretariat, but he's the donkey at the county fair. He's going to get startled by a loud noise and kick you in the balls. The very existence of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is driving Trump insane, and it's revealed his true character for the world to see. That's why he's losing his mind at Kamala's poll numbers and crowd sizes, and why Republicans are desperately cycling through one nonsensical attack after another. For Walz, their latest is a dumb nickname that's probably not going to help them with women voters. -They are calling him tonight Tampon Tim. -A nickname for Tim Walz is Tampon Tim. -Trump's running against a woke woman and a progressive V.P. named Tampon Tim. -Republicans are flailing worse than me at Olympic breakdancing. Just to clarify, Walz signed a bill into law providing for free period products in public schools. It does not require them. Exactly, exactly. It does not require them in boys' bathrooms. Local districts have flexibility to decide where to put them in. And some, though not all, chose to include them in boys' bathrooms. And my response to that is, "Who cares?" Think it's scandalizing for an eighth-grade boy to see a tampon? The worst thing that will happen is they'll steal them, put them in their friend's locker as a joke, and their friend will say, "Not cool, Mike." And they'll say, "Shut up, Dave." And then the principal will come by and say, "Hey, those aren't toys. Now stop being so weird and get to football practice." And they'll say, "Yes, Mr. Walz." Walz freaks out Republicans, and Harris freaks out Trump because he can't stand the idea of anyone else getting more media attention or more crowds or more positive coverage. And now he's once again claiming Democrats are cheating. Basically, Trump thinks he's getting screwed worse than a guy who's... -Having sex with a couch. -This has been "A Closer Look." ♪♪