The 2016 presidential election has been … weird. Perhaps no weekend signified this better than the one we just finished, in which Donald Trump and Marco Rubio traded petty insults, Rubio made a penis joke, and Trump resisted disavowing former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.
Watch: Seth Meyers looks on the state of the Republican race — and despairs
Seth Meyers ran through some of the weekend’s most ridiculous moments in a Late Night segment on Monday. Here are some of his best zingers:
- “Even racists know you have to pretend not to be racist in public — Trump lets just enough racism slip that racists can listen to him and think, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s our guy’”: Meyers was calling out Trump’s resistance to disavowing white supremacists. When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump if he would disavow Duke and the KKK, Trump said, “I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.” That’s despite Trump telling journalist Matt Lauer in 2000 that David Duke is “a bigot” and “a racist.”
- “Would he really [pass laws that limit the First Amendment]? Well, perhaps a clue lies in how many times Trump has praised other actual dictators on the campaign trail”: Meyers played several clips of Trump praising the actions of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
- “When you make a dick joke on the campaign trail, you’re the dick”: Meyers was referring to Rubio’s literal penis joke. Rubio said of Trump on Sunday, “He’s taller than me. He’s like 6’2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5’2”. Have you seen his hands? They’re like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands.”
- “It is hard to find an act of political opportunism and self-interest as brazen as this one”: Meyers mocked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s endorsement of Trump, which followed a long campaign in which Christie repeatedly denigrated his then-opponent. Candidate Christie previously said of Trump, for example, “These times and these challenges demand a grown-up. We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief.”
This is the state of the Republican race. Whether Trump wins at this point (and he looks likely to), he can at least claim to have changed America’s political discourse — but not for the better.
