Seth Meyers took time on Monday’s episode of Late Night to celebrate president-elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump, and to highlight the mass outpouring of joy expressed nationwide over the results.
“You know you were a bad president when people were celebrating an old white centrist like he was the sunset at Burning Man,” Meyers joked. Of Biden, he added, “Did he win an election or the World Cup? Did those people vote for Biden, or did they just pull down a statue of Saddam?”
Rather than basking in the glow of victory, though, Meyers instead focused much of his attention on the Republican response to Biden’s victory—from attempts by GOP leaders to subvert democracy and delegitimize the election results with baseless claims of voter fraud to bizarre comments from right-wing media figures about Biden’s supposed true nature.
“There is no Joe Biden. The man you remember from the 1980s is gone. He no longer exists. What remains is a projection of sorts, a hologram designed to mimic the behavior of a non-threatening political candidate,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said last week. “These people seek absolute sameness. Total uniformity. You’re happy with your corner coffee shop—they want to make you drink Starbucks every day from now until forever, no matter how it tastes.”
“By the way, to anyone who thought things were going to go back to normal once Trump was gone, just a reminder: Fox News called Biden a hologram who wants to force you to drink Starbucks, and he’s been president-elect for two days,” Meyers said in response. “Can you imagine what it’s going to be like when Biden’s actually in office if Republicans hang on to control the Senate? Who knows if they’ll even let him have a cabinet? Sean Hannity will probably accuse Biden of building a Soros-funded Amtrak station on the moon.”
Response from Republican figures has varied, of course. While numerous elected officials like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Lindsay Graham have refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, other pundits have urged Democratic voters to show empathy toward the opposition party in the face of Trump’s defeat.
“I believe in decency in all matters, and I believe the decent thing to do is let the president himself take the time he wants to absorb this. It is not easy,” Ari Fleisher, former White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush said in an interview this past week.
“It’s truly incredible,” an exasperated Meyers said in response. “The ‘liberal tears’ crowd, the people who spent four years building an entire political movement around triggering their political opponents, need a warm blanket and a cup of Earl Grey tea to cope with losing a presidential election. They literally wore shirts that said ‘Fuck Your Feelings.’ Yes, fuck your feelings. But my feelings? You make love to my feelings.”
Jokes aside, Meyers warned, the response from Republican leadership and right-wing media is not really about hurt feelings. It represents “the beating heart of Trumpism,” Meyers said—“the paranoid, authoritarian belief that your political opponents are illegitimate.”