Golden Globes host Seth Meyers was quick with the Trump jokes on Sunday night.
While introducing the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to the stage, Meyers announced: “Please welcome the president who actually is a stable genius, Meher Tatna.”
Award winner Frances McDormand later commented on the same subject during the awards show, joking that she loved HFPA because “they managed to elect a female president.”
Over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter to declare, “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!”
Earlier in the night, Meyers pointed to The Interview actor-director Seth Rogen: “Hey, remember when he was the guy making trouble with North Korea?” he joked during his monologue. “Simpler times.”
Just days before the awards show, Trump tweeted about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he said “just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Comedians immediately responded with jokes about the innuendo in Trump’s words.
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The same day, the president took to Twitter to announce his “most dishonest and corrupt media awards,” with apparent categories of “dishonesty and bad reporting” in the “fake news media” that he would reveal on Monday. (It has since been moved to Jan. 17, according to Trump, because “the interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated”).
Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee have since jokingly submitted their campaigns for the awards, with Colbert even purchasing a billboard in Times Square for what he referred to as “The Fakies.”
Also notable last week was the publication of Michael Wolff’s book about the Trump administration, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which chronicled the president’s first year in office. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that Trump “certainly” doesn’t think the book should be published, and warned the public about taking the book as fact “when it certainly and clearly is not.”
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In the book, Wolff examines the White House staff surrounding Trump and his family. Wolff wrote in a column for The Hollywood Reporter: “The nature of the comedy, it was soon clear, was that here was a group of ambitious men and women who had reached the pinnacle of power, a high-ranking White House appointment — with the punchline that Donald Trump was president. Their estimable accomplishment of getting to the West Wing risked at any moment becoming farce.”
He went on to detail how Trump’s employees like Kellyanne Conway fiercely defended his words on TV, while she would “put a finger-gun to her head in private,” while the president “seemed as confused as anyone to find himself in the White House.”
The 75th annual Golden Globe Awards were held at the Beverly Hilton.
Tune in after the telecast for The Hollywood Reporter and Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s official aftershow, live on Twitter.
