Seth Meyers Returns to Mock Trump's Bizarre Nobel Prize and Greenland Obsession
While most late-night television hosts remained on holiday for Martin Luther King Jr Day in the United States, Seth Meyers returned to his Late Night desk on Monday evening with a scathing critique of another bewildering weekend of developments from the White House. The host delivered a blistering monologue targeting former President Donald Trump's desperate craving for awards and his incoherent justification for threatening to invade Greenland.
A Weekend of Unfathomable White House Updates
Meyers opened by summarising the surreal sequence of events that had unfolded over recent days. "In the past few days, Trump threatened to invade Greenland, which is a part of Denmark, because he didn't win the Nobel peace prize, which he thinks is decided by Norway, which it's not," Meyers stated with palpable exasperation. He introduced a segment titled 'Seth Rubs His Temples and Tries to Dissociate for 15 Minutes' to unpack the absurdity.
"The news has once again gotten dumber and more exhausting," Meyers continued. "Just another day living in Donald Trump's snow globe, where the snow is cocaine and it never stops shaking." This vivid metaphor would become the centrepiece of his critique of the chaotic political landscape.
Trump's 'Desperate Craving' for Awards and Bizarre Greenland Logic
The host expressed disbelief at Trump's apparent fixation on winning accolades. "America's been through a lot over the years, but the one thing we've mercifully never had to deal with was a president who had a boner for winning awards," Meyers remarked. "You're the president of the United States – that should be reward enough! This guy gets elected, and his next thought is 'better make room in the trophy case.'"
Meyers highlighted how Trump had connected his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize – which is actually decided by a committee in Norway – to his threats against Greenland, an autonomous territory managed by Denmark. In an open letter to the Norwegian prime minister, Trump claimed he deserved the prize because he "stopped 8 wars PLUS" and used the snub to justify needing "complete and total control of Greenland" for world security.
"I love that he's basically saying, 'Here's how important Greenland is. If you'd given me a shiny new medal, I would have let you have it,'" Meyers responded with incredulity.
The Absurdity of Following Trump's Reasoning
Meyers emphasised how challenging it has become to decipher Trump's statements and actions. "It shouldn't be this hard to make sense of what the president says and does on a daily basis," he noted after playing a clip of a news anchor struggling to connect the dots. "Following Trump's logic is like getting way too high and staring at a magic eye poster. But then it turns out it's not even a magic eye poster, there's no hidden image, it's just a bunch of random letters. Turns out it's an eye chart and you're just totally baked at Warby Parker again."
The host found Trump's threat particularly ludicrous. "Also, 'you didn't give me the Nobel peace prize, so now I have to invade another country' is an insane thing to say," Meyers added. "That's like if I said to my kids, 'You didn't get me a World's #1 Dad coffee mug, so I'm moving to Thailand to blow your inheritance, Sam Rockwell in White Lotus style.'"
The Secondhand Nobel Prize Controversy
The situation escalated further when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the actual recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, presented her medal to Trump in an apparent attempt to gain favour. Trump, who had authorised the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and claims to be Venezuela's "acting president," accepted the award despite the Nobel committee's disapproval.
"He actually accepted a secondhand Nobel peace prize – with someone else's name on it," Meyers laughed. "That's like if John Oliver offered me one of his Last Week Tonight Emmys, and I accepted it."
America as a 'Cocaine Snow Globe'
In his concluding remarks, Meyers reflected on how American governance has transformed under Trump's influence. "We used to be a country of laws and norms and independent agencies, co-equal branches of government," he stated. "It was imperfect, it was flawed, but the president had to operate within a system. His impulses were constrained."
Contrasting this with the current political climate, Meyers delivered his powerful final assessment: "Now we live in a cocaine snow globe that shakes with the arbitrary whims of one man." This striking imagery encapsulated his view of a presidency driven by personal vendettas and chaotic decision-making rather than structured governance.
