Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers explain why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez terrifies Trump, Fox News, billionaires

When President Trump took a moment in Tuesday's State of the Union speech to warn about encroaching socialism, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told ABC News, "it was great," she said. "I think he's scared," and "it shows that we've gotten under his skin" and "he knows that he's losing the battle of public opinion." On Thursday night, The Daily Show's Trevor Noah and Late Night's Seth Meyers basically agreed.

House Democrats are going after Trump's tax returns, but "many real billionaires are also worried about the Democrats coming after their taxes," Noah said. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ocasio-Cortez "are coming for the super-rich — which, by the way, sounds like the most useless superhero ever" — and taxing the super-rich turns out to be really popular. "If you ask the super-rich, they've got a billion reasons why their taxes shouldn't go up," Noah said, but "you don't have to be a genius to see" that "these billionaires are fear-mongering. Right? They're making it seem like there are only two options in life: Either they have low taxes or we starve to death in Trumpezuela. And it's bulls--t."

"Scaremongering about socialism might have worked a few years ago but it's lost its punch now that Republicans have used it over and over and over again," Meyers said on Late Night. And "if you thought billionaire Donald Trump would be the least effective messenger against the supposed dangers of socialized medicine, you'd be wrong." He showed a clip of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson talking health care on Fox Business, marveling: "The anchor actually had so say, 'People get sick on Earth in human form.'"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"The reason they're all freaking out about Medicare-for-all is because they know it makes basic sense to people," Meyers said. "Most people don't care whether it's called socialism or capitalism or whatever, they just know it's inherently unfair for mega-billionaires to hoard their wealth while millions of Americans don't even have health care." Watch below. Peter Weber

YouTube

Watch On