Seth Meyers was in high spirits Monday night, and it’s no wonder: President Trump couldn’t have handed him and his staff better material if he’d spent the weekend pushing a piano up a flight of stairs. Trump’s weekend was so clownish, so boneheaded, so unbelievable, that Meyers can more or less coast through a list of catastrophically dumb things the president has been up to and count on their self-evident absurdity to carry the day. Like this joke:
So rather than fill any of the hundreds of vacancies in his government, Trump spent the weekend golfing and then woke up Monday morning to watch TV and pick fights on Twitter.
It’s funny because it’s true! But the total amount of humor in the world at any one time must be a constant, because as the news becomes funnier, jokes that used to work lose their humor. For example, here’s Seth Meyers in 2011 on “Weekend Update,” talking about a presidential candidate named Donald Trump:
What bothers me is that he’s getting so much attention for this fake presidential run. I know Trump thinks any publicity is good publicity, the same way he apparently thinks any hair is good hair. But why are we talking about this guy like he really might be president? If saying you were going to do something counted, my dad would be on the cover of Finished Basement magazine.
Meyers’ old Saturday Night Live monologue has clear-cut punchlines with great payoffs, and in almost any other timeline, they’d still slay. In this universe, though, those jokes aren’t funny anymore. If you feel like laughing till you cry, here’s Meyers’ full “Weekend Update” segment, complete with Celebrity Apprentice jokes and a tour of the 2012 Republican primary field:
