Seth Meyers tries to explain why Fox News is pretending Hillary Clinton is president

Seth Meyers on Fox News and Hillary
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Late Night With Seth Meyers)

"The Trump administration seems permanently inundated by scandal and constantly under siege," so "many on the right seem to want to live in an alternate reality where Trump actually isn't president," Seth Meyers said on Thursday's Late Night. Who is president, then? Well, on Fox News, it's Hillary Clinton, he said. "And in particular, they've tried to dredge up a series of debunked and overblown stories to muddy the waters and make it look like it was actually Hillary who colluded with Russia," constantly repeating that the "real Russia scandal" involves Clinton, not President Trump.

Meyers briefly discussed reports that the Clinton campaign helped finance the research on Trump and Russia commingling that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, compiled into a now-famous dossier. He then showed the "new entry to one of our favorite montages" — Sean Hannity trying to defend Trump by repeating the most salacious claim from the dossier. But if "Fox News would much rather talk about Hillary than Donald Trump," they're not alone, Meyers said. "The right, in the Trump era, doesn't have coherent principles or an ideology, it just has enemies. Which is why they prefer to inhabit an alternate reality where Hillary Clinton is president. And what little you do hear about Trump won't be negative."

Meyers looked at some of Fox News' sycophantic interviews with Trump — 18 since he was president — comparing Fox News hosts to "dance moms quietly doing the routine in the background so their kids won't mess up." He also feigned sympathy for Trump: "To be fair, you might also have an inflated ego if there was a whole TV channel dedicated to showering you with praise." You can watch that and more below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.