Late Night host Seth Meyers announced Tuesday night that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is banned from appearing on his NBC program.
During Tuesday night’s episode of Late Night, Meyers said that Trump would not be allowed on the program as long as the Washington Post was barred from covering the candidate’s campaign events. The Trump campaign revoked the newspaper’s press credentials earlier this week.
“Yesterday, in the wake of the shooting in Orlando, Donald Trump gave a speech on terrorism in which he continued his Cal Ripken-esque streak of making inflammatory statements without any evidence whatsoever,” Meyers said.
“When it comes to bigotry, Trump keeps upping his game,” the late-night host added. “But even for Trump, Monday was a new low. For one thing, Trump banned a major newspaper from reporting on his campaign, and it’s not even the first time he’s done that.”
Trump revoked the Post‘s credentials earlier this week, calling the paper “phony and dishonest.” The candidate was apparently incensed at a recent headline that suggested that Trump had linked President Obama to the terrorist who murdered 49 people in an Orlando nightclub on Sunday.
“We here at Late Night believe in freedom of the press and have therefore decided to stand in solidarity with them,” Meyers said, referring to the Post. “So long as the Washington Post is banned from Donald Trump’s campaign, Donald Trump will be banned from ever coming on this show. You missed out, buddy… We could have driven around together while you yelled out the window at immigrants in Carpool Scary-oke.”
“Trump is stoking fear and spreading hate,” Meyers continued. “This is important, we cannot become immune to it. We cannot allow it to become normalized, which is why we need a robust independent press, like the newspapers Trump banned from his campaign, to challenge the fear-mongering and provide us with sober, clear-eyed reporting.”
Meyers’s speech echoed that of his fellow late-night host Stephen Colbert, who also accused Trump of “fear-mongering” during the Tuesday night episode of his Late Show, and similarly called Trump’s Monday national security speech “a new low.”
In a segment on his program Tuesday night, Colbert drew a swastika on a chalkboard to link various phrases from Trump’s Monday speech together.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum