Seth Meyers on Trump’s State of the Union address: ‘A vehicle to attack anyone who doesn’t bend the knee’
Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s extremely long State of the Union address and a bombshell new report on redactions from the Jeffrey Epstein files.Donald Trump arrived to his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening with low expectations and even lower goodwill, with his approval rating hovering somewhere around a dismal 36%.“So the polling was bad before the speech and bad after the speech,” Seth Meyers reported on Wednesday evening, “and on top of that it was long and boring,” clocking in at a record one hour and 47 minutes.Or, if you’re Republican, it was “the best State of the Union speech that I’ve seen”, to quote the House speaker, Mike Johnson.Ted Cruz went one step further, calling it “majestic”.
And according to one Fox News commentator: “Any historian who’s writing about this presidency has to watch this speech tonight and read it carefully,”“Historians have to read it carefully? Trump didn’t read it carefully!” the Late Night responded before footage of Trump stumbling over nonsensical sentences,“And yet despite the fact that it strained everyone’s attention spans, Trump expected everyone to leap to their feet and applaud for him, including the Democrats, and his feelings were very hurt when they didn’t,” he continued,When Democrats refused to applaud, Trump lashed out – “These people are crazy,” he said menacingly,“Trump is so desperate for a win, he tried to co-opt the US men’s hockey team’s Olympic gold medal like he had something to do with it,” Meyers added before a clip of Trump bragging: “Our country is winning again, and in fact we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it.
”“Hey man, you’re not winning,” Meyers corrected.“They’re winning.You didn’t win jack shit.“Trump used his speech the way he uses all of his speeches: as a vehicle to attack anyone who doesn’t bend the knee,” he concluded.“And since that’s a majority of the country, his poll numbers are terrible.
”“We’re still all recovering from the president’s bramble ramble brain jamble,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show,“But the reviews are in, and they are bad,” The New York Times called it a “tedious, tiresome performance”, while the Atlantic declared that “the State of the Union revealed a sad reality”,Colbert, for what it’s worth, found the speech “boring and disturbing”, both for what was said and for what was not,“One thing Trump did not mention in his two-hour, hockey-humping, immigrant grumbling jambaroo was anything about the Epstein files,” Colbert noted.
“Now, it is well known that big, incriminating stuff has been redacted from what Pam Bondi released,” including 50 pages of material related to Trump.“And it’s totally on-brand for the DoJ – this DoJ especially – to be protecting Trump.It’s the least surprising headline since ‘Youngest child becomes theater major’.”“Now, we don’t know exactly what’s in there or if it’s true, and whatever it is, Trump denies any wrongdoing,” he continued.“But it is weird that these files specifically are missing, because the law prohibits redacting on the basis of embarrassment or reputational harm.
” And according to the New York Times, the missing files include FBI memos summarizing interviews conducted by the bureau with a woman who alleged in 2019 that she had been sexually assaulted by Trump and Epstein when she was 13 to 15 years old.“Holy unholy.This would be the worst scandal in presidential history,” Colbert marveled.“That the files are missing should be the biggest story in the world, but we’re all so exhausted and worn down by this turd of a time that when a bombshell like this comes along, we go, ‘Oh, that’s terrible … I wonder if that baby monkey made friends yet.’”In Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel continued to trace the fallout from Trump’s State of the Union address.
“Basically Trump’s message to America, if you didn’t see it last night, was if you’re struggling financially or trying to support your family by putting food on the table, if you’re having a hard time, you’re wrong,You’re actually very rich, and let’s stop talking about it,“Four days after the supreme court torched his tariffs – the centerpiece of his cockamamie foreign policy – he said we are winning so much, we don’t know what to do with it,” he added,“This is what happens to old people who only watch Fox News: they become confused about reality,“The fact that he’s 79 years old and spoke uninterrupted for almost two hours – it’s the only proof I’ll ever need that he wears a diaper,” he quipped.
“He’s definitely wearing a diaper.He might be wearing two diapers.”Later in his monologue, Kimmel also touched on the bombshell New York Times story on redactions from the Epstein files including FBI interviews with a woman who alleged that Trump and Epstein sexually assaulted her when she was a young teenager.Robert Garcia, a House Democrat on the oversight committee, confirmed in a statement that the justice department “appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes”.“Hey Pam Bondi, cancel your blowout! We’ve got heinous crimes to investigate here,” Kimmel said with disgust.
“Why are they being allowed to hide this stuff? You’re supposed to release the files! What a bunch of hypocrites,If these interviews were on Hunter Biden’s laptop, we’d know every word of them,”And on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic examined the gory rhetoric of Trump’s speech, in which he bragged about the US military shooting targets in the head and streaking halls with blood,“Look, there’s nothing wrong with honoring Americans who have been through tragedies, but we used to have American presidents who could do that without sounding like a six-year-old dismembering his GI Joes,” she said,But the speech “wasn’t just two hours of Donald Trump traumatizing America”, she added.
“One reason that the speech went so long is because Republicans kept interrupting for applause breaks, which Trump would just bask in, rotating back and forth like he was stuck on oscillating-fan mode.“But the Democrats stayed seated almost the entire night, and you could tell it started to get under Trump’s skin.”Faced with a disapproving audience, Trump lashed out.“How do you not stand?” he shouted.“You should be ashamed of yourselves!”“Mr President, I will have you know that the Democrats are not standing because they are outraged by your tyranny and lawless behavior … and also they’re asleep right now,” Lydic joked before clips of Democratic lawmakers who apparently dozed off during the speech.
Subsidies for Rolls-Royce might seem a bit rich, but they are inevitable | Nils Pratley
Rolls-Royce, the engine-maker and defence firm that is spitting out so much cash it can shove £7bn to £9bn towards buying back shares over the next three years, would like UK taxpayers to find a few quid – reportedly up to £200m as a first slug – to help fund one its big bets. The company would “appreciate” financial support from the government to smooth work on a new engine, says its chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgiç.Outrageous? Well, corporate welfare for Rolls is obviously absurd in the abstract. If there is a definition of a company that can afford to pay for its own research and development, this is it. One might also say Rolls owes us a favour since it was the recipient of billions of pounds worth of loan guarantees from the UK’s export finance agency when the Covid wolf was at the corporate door in 2020
Drax to stop burning controversial Canadian wood within next year
The owner of Drax power plant has started reducing the amount of Canadian wood pellets it burns, and will stop burning trees from British Columbia entirely within the next year.The FTSE 250 company Drax Group said its Canadian wood pellet plants, which once supplied millions of tonnes of biomass to be burnt in its North Yorkshire power plant, had cost the company almost £200m in financial impairments last year.The company said the pellet production plants, which have come under criticism from environmentalists, faced a “challenging outlook” after a decision in the second half of last year that, from 2027, the Drax power plant would burn pellets sourced only from the US.Despite the writedown, Drax shares soared to 20-year highs to give the company a market value of about £3bn after it reported better than expected full-year earnings of £947m for 2025 and raised shareholder dividends by 11.5%
Met police to pilot facial recognition identity checks, mayor confirms
Metropolitan police officers are to start scanning citizens’ faces using automated facial recognition technology to check their identities, in a move backed by the mayor of London but described as “alarming” by opponents.The pilot was revealed on Thursday when Sadiq Khan said 100 officers would use the roaming technology – commonly deployed on smartphones – for six months. The mayor was responding to questioning from an opposition politician amid rising concern about the rollout of AI-powered policing tools. The Met’s website still states it “does not presently use the so-called operator initiated facial recognition”.Face scanning has already been deployed by police with cameras on vans and in fixed locations including in Croydon, Manchester and South Wales
Instagram to alert parents if teens repeatedly search self-harm terms
Instagram will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm.The announcement on Thursday comes as Instagram’s parent company, Meta, is in the midst of two trials over harms to children.A trial under way in Los Angeles questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm minors. Another in New Mexico seeks to determine whether Meta failed to protect kids from sexual exploitation on its platforms.The alerts will only go to parents who are enrolled in Instagram’s parental supervision program
Brady Tkachuk decries White House’s AI video of him insulting Canadians after US gold
US ice hockey star Brady Tkachuk has said he does not appreciate an AI video released by the White House that shows him insulting Canadians.Tkachuk played in the Americans’ victory over Canada at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, which secured the US men their first gold medal since 1980. In the wake of that win, the White House’s TikTok account published video of Tkachuk saying: “They booed our national anthem, so I had to come out and teach those maple syrup eating fuckers a lesson.”Tkachuk never said those words and the video, which has had more than 10m views, is labelled as AI-generated.“Well, it’s clearly fake, because it’s not my voice, not my lips moving,” Tkachuk said on Thursday
Golfer Andrea Pavan ‘thankful to be alive’ after reportedly falling down lift shaft
Italian golfer Andrea Pavan is “thankful to be alive” after reportedly falling three floors down a lift shaft.The 36-year-old, a two-time European Tour winner, was scheduled to be playing in this week’s South African Open Championship at Stellenbosch Golf Club but was forced to withdraw after the incident on Wednesday.According to reports the accident, which happened in his private accommodation, occurred when the lift doors opened but there was no lift car in the shaft and Pavan fell, sustaining multiple injuries.Italian media reports say he underwent a six-hour operation to reduce several vertebral fractures and implant a plate in his shoulder and is in a serious but not life-threatening condition.Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhone or the Google Play store on Android by searching for 'The Guardian'
Netflix shares jump after walking away from Warner Bros Discovery deal, clearing way for Paramount – business live
Ocado failing to deliver on its potential as one of UK’s great technology hopes
Woman at heart of US trial says she was addicted to social media at age six
Riaz Hasan obituary
Australia v India: second women’s one-day cricket international – live
Birmingham City’s owners explore moving into rugby union and buying Prem franchise