Seth Meyers used his latest Late Night monologue to mock Donald Trump’s trip to China, turning the president’s reception abroad into a punchline about flattery, money and embarrassment. Meyers said Trump arrived with his son Eric Trump and an entourage of American CEOs, including Elon Musk, while Trump told Xi Jinping it was an honor to be his friend.
Meyers said Trump’s family made about $4bn in the first year of his second term, and joked that the money was not even from doing anything beyond government contracts, shady crypto deals and memecoins. He then pointed to a 91-storey Trump tower on Australia’s Gold Coast that was scrapped after the brand was judged increasingly toxic there, adding that the warning meant something “as everything there is toxic.”
The comic framed the trip as proof that Trump is eager for the kind of reception he rarely gets at home. Trump’s welcome in China included a group of children dancing and cheering, and when he remarked on how beautiful they were, Meyers replied, “The last time I saw so many young and beautiful children greet a plane, it was on an island.” He also said it was the perfect time for the president to fly to China because Trump is loathed overseas.
That criticism carried into one of Meyers’ sharpest lines of the night. Looking at footage of Musk behaving strangely at a party, he said the Tesla chief would need to project dignity and poise before asking, “The fuck are you doing, dude?” He added that Musk looked like “an eight-year-old who’s ruining the family Christmas card.”
The late-night jokes landed against a broader political backdrop that gave them bite. Trump’s arrival was mocked across China online, and state censors there have been allowing comments about him to go viral. Meyers said the internet memes and posts are mocking Trump where he is most likely to see it, and argued that what Trump cares about overseas is “flattery, fanfare and self-enrichment.”
Stephen Colbert addressed the same trip on The Late Show, focusing on Trump and Xi’s extended handshake and joking about their “inspiring display of hyper-masculine hand dominance.” He warned that Xi might “catch a case of five-day-old banana hand” if he is not careful. The jokes from both hosts turned Trump’s China visit into a late-night ribbing over image, vanity and the uneasy politics that surround both.
