Monday evening's debate was the most hyped political event this entire election, with networks alluding to it as a prize-fight or some kind of wrestling smackdown. "Late Night" host Seth Meyers couldn't believe how completely unprepared Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was and that his vocabulary seemed limited to just seven words.
The discussion for the last 24 hours has been the pundit-loving "expectations game," on what the two candidates were assumed to bring out on the big night. While Trump's campaign tried to mock Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's expectations and claim that she was already trying to lower expectations, in the end, it didn't work out so well for Trump.
“It seems like the Trump campaign was setting expectations so low, all he would have to do is stand still for 90 minutes and he would be the winner,” Meyers noted. “But in the days leading up to the debate, they were worried that bar might be too high.”
The way the media was treating Clinton's expectations was something else entirely. "Basically, her tasks look like advice you'd give a secretary before a job interview in 1950," Meyers explained, citing MSNBC's horrifying expectations charts. "'Smile and let them see you're a dynamite gal!' Meanwhile, his sounds like advice you'd give a murderer at a parole hearing: They need to believe you won't kill again."
“Trump was so unprepared that at one point it looked like he maybe forgot Hillary’s name,” Meyers said. He then played the clip from the debate in which Trump snidely asked if he could call Clinton "Secretary."
The New York Times reported last week that Trump was having some problems with debate prep, because he kept getting bored. When it comes to Trump's own advisers, somehow they “see it as a waste of time to try to fill his head with facts and figures.”
The problem is a neurological one, according to Dr. Meyers, TV doctor. “Yeah, his head doesn’t have room for facts and figures because it has to hold seven words,” which he perfectly illustrated with this chart:
[caption id="attachment_892868" align="aligncenter" width="615"] Seth Meyers Trump Brain diagram (Photo: Screen capture Seth Meyers)[/caption]
But while Trump might have been dramatically underprepared, according to "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd, Clinton was apparently “over-prepared." Meyers agreed, claiming that Clinton's "patented lukewarm zingers" that fell about as flat as Sully Sullenberger's plane in the Hudson.
The most shocking, and hilarious moments of the debate, however, was when Trump claimed that he has a better temperament than Clinton and the audience audibly laughed. Clinton's grin widened like a cat knowing the prey was hers and her shoulders "shimmied" in a way that earned a lot of Twitter attention.
“Look at that,” Meyers said, trying to imitate Clinton’s happy shimmy. “That's how an aunt shimmies when she hears ‘Single Ladies’ at a wedding.”
The most shocking part of the evening was the realization that even Fox News came to. “After tonight’s debates several FOX News analysts said that Hillary Clinton is the clear winner. Maybe global warming is a hoax, because hell has frozen over,” Meyers joked.
“In the end,” Meyers concluded, “the entire night and the current state of American politics can be summarized by these few words.” Via Trump: “Howard Stern” and “Rosie O’Donnell.” Via Clinton:
