Seth Meyers used his Late Night monologue to skewer Donald Trump’s latest fixation, arguing that the president is more interested in magnets, catapults and sperm counts than in the prices Americans were promised would come down. Meyers replayed Trump’s campaign pledge from the 2024 campaign to end inflation and lower the cost of gas and groceries, then contrasted that with the president’s recent habit of talking about wet magnets and electric catapults.
The punch line landed because it came with a clean contrast. Trump promised relief on the costs people notice every day, but Meyers said he was now “laser-focused” on “important stuff” like “magnetic catapults and sperm counts.” That was the thread running through the segment, and it is why the clip is getting attention now: it turned a policy criticism into a joke about where the president’s attention has gone.
Meyers kept building the bit by replaying the oddest recent talking points. He said Trump’s way of bringing up groceries makes it sound like “he just found out about groceries,” and he mocked the surge of strange medical and military obsessions around the White House. In one line, he said Trump’s own circle of “internet-poisoned weirdos” had latched onto bizarre subjects after he got into office, then moved straight into jokes about testosterone, magnets and the people pushing them.
That meant Robert F Kennedy Jr was not spared. Meyers said Kennedy lectured people about the low sperm count of teenagers, then asked, “Is there an erotic fiction section in AARP magazine?” and, “Are you a gym teacher subbing in for health class?” He then cited a study showing there was no cause for panic over the sperm-count concern, undercutting the alarm with the kind of throwaway factual correction that makes the joke hit harder, not softer.
From there, Meyers widened the target list to Pete Hegseth and the military. He said Hegseth had decided to focus on testosterone levels in the military and wants them checked annually, then asked, “What about the war in Iran?” and, “Is testosterone gonna fix the war in Iran?” He called the situation “insane” and said the war has “no end in sight,” shifting the segment from satire into an indictment of misplaced priorities.
He returned to Trump’s own language about hardware and power. Meyers called the president’s obsession with aircraft carriers “very sane, very normal,” then replayed footage from a press conference this week in which Trump raged about wet magnets and electric catapults rather than steam ones. Meyers said, “I’ve never seen someone get this worked up about a fucking magnet,” before adding, “You’re thinking of cellphones or gremlins” and, “You might want Pete Hegseth to check your testosterone levels.”
The joke got sharper when Meyers tied the weirdness to money. He pointed to reporting that a White House teleprompter operator made $100,000 on Kalshi betting on Trump speeches and said, “Everyone’s getting their grift on in the Trump White House!” Then he turned back to what he called a pointless and costly war, saying that despite Trump repeating there was a deal no fewer than 38 times, there is still no deal.
For Meyers, the point was simple: Trump ran on prices and is now consumed by a carousel of side issues that would be absurd even if the country were not still waiting for relief. The unresolved question is not whether Meyers found material. It is whether Trump ever gets back to the promises he made before the campaign turned into a monologue about magnets, catapults and sperm counts.
